Table 1.

Overview of the mainstream social media platforms for hosting an academic Twitter account.¹¹

	Instagram	Twitter	Facebook	YouTube	TikTok
Monthly users	>1 billion	0.3 billion	2.5 billion	>2 billion	0.8 billion
Users	Teens and young adults, usually <40 years old	Middle-age professionals, 35–65 years old	More popular in the older age group, 30–40+ years old	All ages, usually 15- to 34-year-old adults	Teenagers and young adults, 16–24 years old
Content	Visual work including pictures/animations	Breaking news, bite-sized content	Pictures, videos, blogs, discussion	Videos, tutorials	Entertaining, interesting, comedic and sometimes nonsensical short-form video content
Strengths	Emphasis on visual content; can be useful for learning anatomy, sharing algorithms	Most popular for professionals; allows short, open dialogue for debate and crowdsourcing; content easily shareable through retweets	Most popular social media platform; no limits on wording, number of images or videos	Exclusive focus on videos can reach a wide audience, particularly younger users	Fun and short video format popular amongst younger audience; posts can quickly amass large numbers of views
Limitations	Not ideal for discussions; not popular for medical education	Character limit can be challenging; format not immediately intuitive and requires a longer learning curve	Losing popularity among younger audience; not a popular platform for medical education	Not ideal for discussions; no regulation of content and overcrowding can make navigation difficult	Not ideal for discussions; not popular for medical education; risk of misinformation