The Zombie Apocalypse: The Viral Impact of Social Media Marketing on Health

Social media platforms Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook facilitate the communication and sharing of ideas across people and populations. Large corporations often leverage consumer impressions ascertained through viral, social media trends, and act on these data through marketing campaigns. These campaigns are dually inexpensive and extensive, sometimes reaching millions of users simultaneously, exploiting their impressions for consumerism purposes. Whether these purposes have an adverse effect on consumer health through the promotion of behaviors, content, or goods which are nonconductive to good health outcomes is a consideration secondary to the extent to which these marketing agendas are reaching patrons of social media. This report informally explores the domains of these social media giants and contends that they are facilitating the propagation of negative as opposed to positive health promotion, including commentary on potential solutions or approaches to mitigating these negative exploitations of consumers' impressions through viral social media marketing campaigns.