Purpose We will provide information on two study branches: content analysis, showing the frequency and content of injury prevention social posts from key disseminators, and eye tracking experiment, examining the textual and pictorial factors of social posts that influence visual attention and correct safety behavior among parents of young children.

Methods First, we conducted a quantitative content analysis (May 2018-April 2019) of Instagram posts from 22 key pediatric injury disseminators. Next, parents (n=150) of young children (<7 years) completed an eye-tracking experiment, where they were exposed to six posts, three with imagery that matched the textual information explaining the recommended safety information (concordant) and three with imagery that did not (discordant). We examined the proportion of dwell time spent on textual and pictorial areas. We applied generalized estimating equation regressions to examine the relationship between concordant imagery and visual attention, accounting for frequency of social use and health literacy (Newest Vital Sign).

Results A total of 4,598 posts were analyzed, of which 754 had a pediatric injury focus. Pediatric injury content was posted in more than half (54%) of posts from pediatric injury organizations. More posts had images than videos, but videos were more likely to show safety recommendations. Participants spent an average of 5.3 seconds on the concordant image posts compared to 3.3 seconds on the discordant image posts (p<0.001). Each second of viewing time on concordant posts was associated with a 2.8% increase in safety information knowledge (p<0.001).

Conclusion Visual attention to posts with the recommended safety behaviors attracted significantly higher visual attention and resulted in an increased recognition/identification of the optimal safety actions.

Significance Identifying the gaps in social media messaging and understanding how parents view these messages allows us to provide recommendations for injury prevention organizations to more effectively design and disseminate child injury prevention messages.