Pragmatic lessons for harnessing social media for health research through digital data donation post-API access

Social media offers a real-time, ecological, and large-scale data source for health research. Platforms are increasingly restricting access, posing a threat to the future of social media-based health research. We describe two challenges with this data: rapidly changing platforms, which affect use and user behavior, and variations in data availability. To address these challenges, we present four pragmatic strategies for accessing and using social media data, focusing on data donation.