For educators, this systematic review presents the small—but growing— body of evidence for the ef cacy of social media tools in enhancing medical education. In developing and implementing future interventions, educators should consider ways to maximize the opportunities provided
by social media, such as active learning through engagement in user-generated content, facilitation of communication and feedback, collaboration, and access to resources and interaction without physical location restrictions. In addition, they should take into account the challenges reported in the studies reviewed here, including technical issues, varying learner participation, and tools’ security settings. Although the use of social media components in courses and other learning activities can save time by increasing ef ciency, it can also be time- consuming. The time spent by faculty and learners on social media should add value to face-to-face instruction if these tools are to be incorporated successfully into medical education curricula.
Researchers should be assured that
social media use is a legitimate topic of scienti c study.40–42 The body of literature evaluating use of social media in medical education holds ample room for further inquiry. We found there to be a lack of high-quality evidence (e.g., only one randomized controlled trial), infrequent assessment of skill- or behavior-based outcomes, and no assessment of patient- based outcomes in the studies included in this review. New technologies evolve rapidly, often faster than sound evidence for their effectiveness can be established. Although this presents a challenge to researchers, the pace of change can
also offer opportunities for innovation, such as engaging learners in curricular development.
Since conducting our literature search, we have endeavored to remain up-to- date in this expanding literature through ongoing reading, discussions with experts in the eld, and publication alerts from the MEDLINE and Scopus databases.