Research Roundup

Medical aesthetic clinics use social media platforms to engage with both their existing and future patients. Verification surrounding these social media posts as investigated by UK and Dutch aesthetic clinics highlight the dangers associated, showing that the intersection between professionalism and commercialism is being called into question. This has sparked debate on the need for regulating social media posts.

To carry out this study, a selection of UK and Dutch social media posts were collected randomly from the widely popular platform, Instagram. These posts from medical aesthetic clinics all offer non-surgical procedures.

A total of 395 posts made by six Dutch and four UK clinics, between January 2018 and July 2019, were included in this study for analysis.

It was evident from the Instagram posts created by both Dutch and UK medical aesthetics clinics that the balance between being both professional and commercial was not evident.

The authors conclude that there have previously been calls for ethical marketing of medical aesthetic clinics and treatments on social media. Despite this, their study further proves that not all clinics follow advertising guidelines and continue to trivialise these procedures.