In the 21st century, it's a given that social media is a ubiquitous tool used equally by professionals, businesses, corporations and laypeople. While many forms of social media may be perceived as being superficial or lacking in depth, the nursing profession has seen a veritable explosion of salient and powerful social media use by individual nurses and nursing organizations.

Superficiality is not a given

The perception of the relative superficiality of social media depends greatly on where the observer is looking for "proof" of such. While a casual user can easily follow news about the latest dance craze or cat videos, the serious professional can just as easily find conversations regarding scientific and medical developments, research, best practices and a plethora of useful and applicable information.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, social media has fueled revolutions, saved lives, connected new friends and business partners, and grown the standing and reach of specific industries. Conversations over various social media platforms can lead to collaborative ventures, political and activist movements, friendships, new technological and creative developments, as well as professional connections with unlimited capacity for positive outcomes.

Thus, the superficiality of social media is certainly not a given.

Where nurses hold sway

Whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Google+, the community of nurses who use these platforms for professional reasons has grown exponentially. Follow any hashtag related to nursing (eg: #nurse, #nurses, #nursing, etc.), and you will undoubtedly find conversational threads that reveal the ways in which nurses are using social media for professional learning, communication and collaboration.

While some hashtags may be dominated by job postings, snarky sarcasm or spam-like posts that contribute nothing meaningful, the pearls and gems are always there, even if sometimes frustratingly buried among the verbal flotsam and jetsam.

Meanwhile, private and public nursing groups — specifically on Facebook and LinkedIn — provide dedicated, moderated forums where nurses go deeper than the usual news feed allows.

These groups are gold mines of knowledge and collaborative sharing, bringing together nurses from across the spectrum, and from around the world. The richness of these forums is undeniable, especially when there are actively engaged members who are dedicated to a thriving community.

The dark side

With any new technology, there is always a dark side, and social media is no exception. Other than the above-mentioned "verbal flotsam and jetsam" that can clutter a news feed, others may put social media to use for nefarious — or at least misguided — purposes.

When under stress or otherwise blowing off steam, some nurses may use social media to cast a negative light on their colleagues, profession or employer — or worse yet, on a patient. Nurses may not necessarily share HIPAA-protected information on social media, but the negative tone used by some users to describe patients is unwarranted, crass and unwise.

In several cases, both professional nurses and nursing students have posted photographs on social media in which patients were featured. While the offenders may have judged the patients as unidentifiable in the photos, there are too many factors at play in such a scenario to even begin to understand why a nurse would act in such an ill-conceived and unprofessional manner.

Yes, nurses (and others) have abused, and will continue to abuse, social media for reasons that are difficult to comprehend. Having said that, the minuscule fraction of nurses using social media in a less-than-conscientious way is far outweighed by those who respectfully utilize social media for their own betterment, and that of the profession and our patients.

Leveraging our voice

Social media is indeed a multifaceted form of communication to which we will continue to have unfettered and increasing access. As the technology improves and our facility with it develops apace, there is no foreseeable end to how individual nurses and the nursing profession as a whole will leverage these platforms for the good of all.

Social media can be used to reach patients, students, colleagues, laypeople and professionals, and they can be robustly populated with valuable content created or curated by individuals and nursing organizations.

Nurses must continue to leverage their voices in the "noise" of 21st-century society, and social media is a potentially powerful tool in the hands of the most trusted profession in the United States — and perhaps the world.