Investigating the electronic health literacy promotion strategies in adolescent girls: A cross-sectional study in Iran.

Abstract

Background: Today, a fifth of the world's population is made up of adolescents aged 10-19, 500 million of these people are adolescent girls, and investing in the health of adolescents is one of the main ways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Health concerns are a phenomenon that preoccupies many people at some point in their lives, and in some cases, even though the evidence does not show a specific disease, the person's concerns are not resolved and health anxiety continues. E-health literacy helps people manage important health issues, make informed health decisions, or communicate with doctors. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the electronic health literacy promotion strategies in adolescent girls of Iran: a cross-sectional study.

Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2023 on 351 teenage girls of Iran, whose information was completely recorded in the Sib system. The sampling method was random and was used to collect information from the Electronic Health Literacy Questionnaire and the Health Anxiety Questionnaire. Finally, the data collected by the questionnaire were coded and analyzed after entering into the computer by SPSS version 25 software using descriptive and analytical tests.

Result: The average age of adolescent girls was 0.834 + 85.15 years. The average score of electronic health literacy in adolescent girls was 79.07 + 14.54, and the average health anxiety score was 83.3 + 35.73. There was an inverse statistical relationship between e-health literacy and health anxiety in girls. The highest average score of health literacy at the age of 17 was for "girls whose fathers are retired and whose mothers are housewives", fathers and mothers with university education, mothers in the age group of 35-40 years, and fathers in the age group of 40-45 years. There was a significant relationship between e-health literacy and factors such as parents' occupation, parents' education, being the second child, and having older siblings (0.05 > 0).

Conclusion: Improving e-health literacy may be an effective strategy to reduce health anxiety in adolescent girls who are the future mothers of the country. Therefore, developing comprehensive programs for the use of cyberspace, creating simple and understandable media, and educational materials, as well as efficient educational interventions for people with insufficient e-health literacy can be an effective step to develop health literacy skills and ultimately reduce health anxiety among adolescents.