Nutrition education and social networks. Criteria in high school adolescents for the selection of food information

Abstract

Introduction: This study was born from the interest of analyzing the nutritional education that adolescents receive in high school, providing them with the criteria to choose food information through social networks, that is, from professionals related to nutrition that base their content and publications in a scientific and objective manner. Social networks are very popular, and some people take advantage of this to promote products or spread false information, which is why awareness must be raised about the proper use of these digital platforms. Methodology: A case study was carried out on 35 students from Villanueva high school located in the municipality f the same name, belonging to the state of Zacatecas, México, of the class of "hygiene and community health", which contemplates in their training subjects on nutritional education. Two semi-structured surveys were applied during the 2022-2023 school year, from which data related to the use of social networks, time spent browsing them, wich ones they mostly use, as well as the type of food information they used were were collected and visualized in these digital media. Results: The approximate age of the respondents  ranged from 17 years, of which 20 were women, 9 were men and 6 did not especify their sex. Likewise, of the total sample, 5.1% were obese, 10.2% were overweight, and 64.1% were normal weight. 100% of the respondents claimed to have an active profile on social networks, where they reported following profiles that talk about nutrition, considering that information is more attractive through these digital media, Discussion: It was shown that the adolescents surveyed do not have the correct criteria to discern between the nutritional information that they view on social networks, since there were greater coincidences in following the accounts, for example: Leana Deeb, Carlos Belcast and Andoni, influencers who do not have academic preparation related to nutrition. Conclusions: The adolescents reported making frequent use of social netwoks and consider them as important elements in their life for communication and obtaining information, however, confusion was found when recognizing wich people have academic preparation in topics of nutrition.