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Hashtags Can Raise Awareness About PF
Isn’t it interesting to think about how the world has changed, even over the last decade? For one thing, information is readily available at your fingertips. Almost any question you have can be answered from the comfort of your own home.
It’s a great tool for travel planning. Whether it is searching for flights, booking a hotel or simply mapping your way around a new city or country, the Internet is such an effective method for travel planning. The Internet also helps people learn. How often do you turn to Google when you are looking to learn something new? Whether it’s about pulmonary fibrosis (PF), weight loss ideas and healthy eating tips, or learning a new hobby such as playing the guitar, the Internet can always teach you something new.
It can be used to connect people from all over the world. Email and social media platforms are easy ways to keep in contact with long-distance friends and family members. If you have friends living on the other side of the world, like I do in Australia, the Internet is such a great tool for keeping up with their lives.
There is another way that the Internet can be particularly effective in bringing people together, especially to provoke change or capture the attention of politicians, celebrities or large corporations and health agencies. This concept is relatively new in comparison to the other capabilities of the Internet, but is universally effective: the hashtag.
A hashtag is used on social media platforms to highlight the solidarity of people who are advocating for a particular movement, topic or change. The hashtag lets their voices be heard as collective as opposed to an individual, and when a number of people get behind a hashtag, it can really illuminate a topic. As an example, the #MeTooMovement blew up on social media platforms as an effort to raise awareness and education about sexual violence and harassment. Another trending hashtag was #MarchForOurLives which represented millions of students taking a stance against gun violence in the wake of school shootings throughout the U.S. The power of social media and hashtags can have real implications on the concerns and issues affecting people everyday. With the power of social media and the Internet, the number of people affected by an issue can be quantified through hashtags.
You might ask how this relates to PF and the disease that is impacting so many of us as patients and our loved ones. One thing I have been trying to do in my own posts about PF, in an effort to raise awareness about this disease, especially as PF Awareness Month approaches, is use hashtags that others who are impacted by this disease might also be using. When you search particular hashtags pertaining to PF, you not only find information about the disease, but you can also connect with others who are using that particular hashtag to raise awareness as well. If you’re social media savvy, and are comfortable doing so, give using a hashtag a try sometime, and check out what others are saying online. Some of the hashtags that I use in my efforts to raise awareness about PF and IPF include: #IPFawareness #PFsucks #lungdiseasestrong and #pulmonaryfibrosis.
Do you use hashtags to raise awareness for pulmonary fibrosis? Please share them with us!
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