Abstract
In today’s digitalized world, most parents are Internet-savvy and use online sources for child health information, mainly due to the 24/7 availability of advice. However, parents are often not specifically trained to identify reliable, evidence-based sources of information. In this cross-sectional online survey among a purposive, non-probabilistic sample of Austrian parents (n = 90, 81.1% females), we assessed aspects of health app use and family policy benefits-related and scenario-based Internet seeking behavior. We found that the surveyed parents showed a high health app use. The participants indicated that they prefer online information seeking to any other option in a scenario describing that their child would be sick at after-work hours, with social media channels being the least preferred source of online information. Mothers and younger parents were more likely to retrieve online information on family policy benefits. With the smartphone in everybody’s pocket, parents seemed to rely on mobile and online content when searching for child health information. Pediatricians are best suited to decide what treatment fits the child or their current medical condition, but nowadays they face increasing numbers of pre-informed parents seeking health information online. Provision of targeted parental education and guidance through the online information jungle could effectively empower parents and smooth personal and digital contacts in the delicate doctor–parent–child triangle.
Highlights
In today’s digitalized society, the Internet has become a highly frequented source of health information.Web sources are already more popular for health information retrieval than healthcare professionals [1].Demographic features influence online habits in general, with gender being the most frequently studied personal characteristic in this respect with a female dominance in, e.g., seeking online health information and using health apps [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Little is known about how Austrian parents in general use digital media to engage in the topic of child health. In this exploratory study on digital media use, we studied a convenience sample of parents to assess health app use, use of online sources, and which hypothetical scenarios would come into effect in the case of a health emergency in the context of childcare
As for family policy benefits, we found that about 70% of participants searched the Web for information on family benefits (73.3%), childcare benefits (72.2%), and parental leave (70.0%), about half of the study subjects searched for information on sole earner deduction and parental part-time work as well as consultation (46.7%), whereas 25.6% of participants searched for information on parent education
Summary
Web sources are already more popular for health information retrieval than healthcare professionals [1]. Demographic features influence online habits in general, with gender being the most frequently studied personal characteristic in this respect with a female dominance in, e.g., seeking online health information and using health apps [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. An unprecedented majority of parents use Web-based sources for actively seeking advice on child health and development issues, with this pre-obtained information increasingly influencing the per se delicate interaction in the doctor–parent–child triangle [1]. General Internet use of parents is independent of their gender and educational level, but younger parents and parents of younger children are more prone to retrieve online information regarding child health [13]. Jaks et al found in a 2019 study that 91% of
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