A different type of internet application for improving health is the use of social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, to monitor and forecast disease epidemics. An epidemic is a sudden and widespread occurrence of a particular disease in a community.

Social media is well adapted for tracking epidemics because they create senses of anonymity and freedom to express personal feelings and information (Charles-Smith et al., 2015). The analysis of language used on social media sites has shed light on various disease outbreaks including alcohol and drug abuse, congestive heart failure, and infectious diseases (Brathwaite et al., 2016). Here we take a look at how social media is being used to combat two prominent epidemics: influenza and suicide.