YouTube™ quality as a source for parent education about the oral hygiene of children

Objectives Early childhood caries is the most common chronic disease of children and a worldwide health problem due to its high prevalence. Maintaining oral hygiene is the first step towards prevention, with parental education being a key factor influencing oral health. The increasing popularity of the Internet as an information source has led to the need to evaluate the reliability and quality of existing information. The aim of the present study was to review YouTube videos on oral hygiene procedures for children and to assess them in terms of their usefulness as a means of educating parents. Methods A search of YouTube was performed using the keywords child tooth brushing. Video lengths, dates of upload, numbers of total views, likes, dislikes and comments were collected. Viewing rates and interaction rates were then calculated. Two dentists independently evaluated the included videos' usefulness in terms of their content. Results The majority of the 90 included videos (68.8%) were uploaded by health-related professionals or websites. Many of the videos were found to be moderately useful (45.6%), with a smaller percentage found to be slightly useful (31.1%). The percentage of very useful videos was 17.8%. Parental supervision during brushing was highlighted in most of the videos (77.7%), while the importance of parents' brushing for modelling (15.5%) was mentioned the least. Conclusions YouTube videos can be used as a useful source for parental education. However, there is a need to improve the quality of the education provided by public health and oral health professionals.