Social Media as Occupation: Implications for Occupational Therapy Practice

Abstract

Technological advances and the emergence of social media have transformed how individuals participate in roles, habits, and routines. In his Eleanor Clarke Slagle lecture, Roger Smith (2017) wrote that “not long ago, using electronic technology was optional. Today, we depend on it” (p. 2). He continued by saying, “communicating with others would be so hampered without technology. We could no longer perform our major life functions” (p. 2). While the increased interconnectedness that technology and social media provide has had many positive impacts on society, there is also growing evidence of the negative effects of social media use on our physical and mental health (Ho et al., 2016;LeBourgeois et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2016; Primack et al., 2017; Shensa et al., 2018; Uhls et al., 2017).While much has been discussed about the use of social media in the popular press, clients’ use of social media has rarely been addressed in the occupational therapy literature. The available occupational therapy literature provides us with strategies for using social media to promote the occupational therapy profession or relates specifically to the ethical behavior of occupational therapists’ use of social media(AOTA, 2016). There is a paucity of literature related to the importance of understanding how clients’ use of social media intersects with their valued and necessary occupations, roles, and routines. Given the ubiquity of social media use and the potential benefits and costs to the daily lives of our clients, we write this Opinions in the Profession piece as a call to action for occupational therapists to recognize social media use as an occupation, to suggest evaluation and intervention strategies, and to discuss future implications for practice with clients across the life span.