A not-so healthy glow: a qualitative analysis of sunbed content and viewer engagement on social media

We conducted informal and formal trend analysis on the term ‘sunbed’ assessing its search popularity, identifying the top-three social media (SM) sites where the term is mentioned, characterizing the persons or groups most likely to post about sunbeds and analysing the content that is most frequently being made available in relation to sunbeds. We found a statistically significant increase in the search trend for the term ‘sunbed’ between 2008 and 2023. While Instagram had the most sunbed mentions, TikTok videos had more viewer engagement. TikTok had more influencer-driven sunbed posts than the other SM platforms. Commercial premises posting about sunbed use featured heavily on Instagram (56%) and TikTok (40%). Our study highlights the harmful influence SM can have.