Effectiveness of Social Media and Applications on Frequency of Tooth Brushing in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Regarding the growth of social networks and health-related applications in mobiles, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of these networks and applications on the frequency of tooth brushing in children and adolescents.

Randomized clinical trials that have studied the effect of social media and health-related mobile applications on the frequency of tooth brushing in children and adolescents were searched in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Embase database with a specific searching strategy and the data from the related articles were transferred to Endnote software. Subsequently, the duplicated articles were removed and the full texts of extracted articles were studied after the review of the titles and abstracts. The quality of articles was appraised using the ROB2tool. The results were analyzed and reported as Standardized Mean Differences (SMD) using STATA14 software after the extraction of quantitative data and calculation of changes of means and standard deviations. Eventually, the quality of evidence was evaluated using the GRADE tool. 

Based on the inclusion criteria three articles were included in the study, two of which were identified with a low risk of bias and there were some concerns regarding the risk of bias in the third article. The used interventions included the “social media” in two studies and “application” in one study. Two articles reported frequency of brushing per day and one reported it per month. The SMD of daily brushing frequency was not significant (P=0.57); however, the increase of monthly brushing frequency was significant (p < 0.001). The overall quality of the evidence of daily brushing frequency was evaluated as high based on the GRADE tool.

Based on the obtained results, social media and applications were not effective in increasing daily tooth brushing frequency in children and adolescents. Regarding the dearth of studies and contradictory results on this subject, there is a need for further studies.