Leveraging Social Media for Nutrition Interventions with Young Populations

This dissertation investigates how adolescents and young adults engage with social media in the context of health and wellness and explores new directions for the design of informatics interventions that utilize social media for promoting healthy nutrition among this population. Adolescence and young adulthood are critical points in the formation of life-long health habits, including healthy eating. Social media presents a unique opportunity for health promotion interventions for this population, given their high levels of engagement with social media in various areas of their lives. Yet contemporary interventions for promoting healthy eating utilize only a limited set of social media capabilities. In this dissertation, I approached these questions though a combination of studies of young adults’ attitudes, preferences, and behaviors with social media, a deployment study of a novel informatics intervention for healthy eating among adolescents and young adults, and explorations of novel ways to incorporate machine learning approaches in identifying opportunities to inspire healthy behaviors.