Citation

Seidenberg AB, Pagoto SL, Vickey TA, Linos E, Wehner MR, Costa RD, Geller AC. Transl. Behav. Med. 2016; 6(2): 271-276.

Affiliation

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s13142-016-0388-6

PMID

27356997

Abstract

Few surveillance tools exist for monitoring tanning bed injuries. Twitter data were examined to identify and describe reports of tanning bed-caused burns. Tweets sent in 2013 containing keywords for tanning bed use and burning were content analyzed to determine whether a burn caused by a tanning bed was described, and additional data on tanning behavior and burn characteristics were extracted. After content assessment, 15,178 (64 %) tweets were found to describe a tanning bed-caused burn. Sites most reportedly burnt were buttocks (n = 3117), face/head (n = 1020), and chest/breast (n = 546). Alarmingly, 200 burns to the eyes/eyelids were mentioned. A total of 456 tweets described burning >1 time from a tanning bed. A total of 211 tweets mentioned falling asleep inside the tanning bed. In 2013, over 15,000 tweets reported tanning bed-caused burns. Twitter data provides unique insight into tanning behaviors and injuries not captured through traditional public health surveillance.

Language: en