Editorial Using Twitter to improve child healthcare Roses Parker The Cochrane Collaboration, London, UK My Twitter profile (@Roses_Parker) informs me that I joined Twitter in March 2016. I was told that Twitter was important for research so I obediently signed up and tentatively ‘hatched’ my first Tweet. From there things grew. I am now JCHC’s Associate Editor for Social Media and I founded and manage the Twitter account for one of the Cochrane Collaboration’s eight networks. Still, I don’t consider myself an expert at social media, I feel have a lot to learn. However, I have certainly come a long way. It seems appropriate for me to use this space to share my journey, inspire use of social media, and guide readers to support its use. Social media, a result of the technological revolution, surrounds us constantly in both personal and professional spheres. It includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, Pinterest, YouTube, Sina Weibo, WeChat and many others not listed. No doubt more platforms are being designed right now. I will focus on Twitter but know that most of this can be applied elsewhere. Originally I was told Twitter was important for researchers to use as self-promotion in a society where if you don’t promote yourself you will fall behind because others certainly will. This is indeed a benefit of Twitter @JournalofCHC and I are always happy for more ‘followers’ but the purpose of this editorial is not to discuss the self-promotion aspect of Twitter. I cannot claim my use of Twitter is entirely absent self-promotion but I can say this not my main purpose. Neither is it the reason I am so passionate about Twitter and why I am writing to encourage your use of it. If you want to use it for personal gain, then you will certainly gain. But I am here to talk about how we can use Twitter to help patients. My main reason for passionate use of Twitter stems back to why I first dipped my toe into healthcare, why I joined the London Ambulance Service, why I became a children’s nurse and why I now work for the Cochrane Collaboration. Simply, patients are my passion and Twitter can help patients, not just a little bit. Although Twitter’s use in healthcare has been debated (Pershad et al., 2018), I believe, at point of writing, that Twitter is potentially research’s best vehicle for knowledge translation. Twitter has 330 million monthly active users (Lin, 2019). It is free for researchers to use and free for patients to access. The character limit takes brevity to a new level and the result is patients are engaged. It cannot be ignored; we owe it to patients to participate in this platform. My three tips for Twitter are the following: 1. Quality not quantity. You may have infinite time at your disposal but I don’t. I have found that one or two carefully crafted Tweets can have far greater impact than a daily Tweet bombardment. Too many Tweets can lead people to become numb to you and your mes- sages. You want your followers to pay attention to what you say. I would like to suggest Journal of Child Health Care 2020, Vol. 24(2) 163–164 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1367493520923204 journals.sagepub.com/home/chc