Children's Health and Safety Facebook page

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Children's Health and Safety Facebook page and website?

The Facebook page targets Canadian parents of children between 0 and 12 years of age and provides them with a forum to share opinions and perspectives relating to various expert information on Children's Health and Safety.

The website healthycanadians.gc.ca/kids, is a one stop location where parents can access the latest expert information on their children's well being. For example, using the online customizable handbook, parents can create their own pamphlet with the expert information they need for their child.

Why is Health Canada using Facebook as a means of communicating directly with parents?

Health Canada uses a variety of social media tools to share its content and to provide access to reliable and timely health information. The Department is using Facebook as a means of communicating directly and engaging with parents. It is an effective approach for the Department to reach its target demographic parents with children ages 0-12.

In addition, Canadians have indicated that they would like the Government of Canada to use Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook more often as a means to communicate with them. This reflects the results of the  2007 New Technologies Survey by Agriculture Canada that identified 87% of Canadians want the Government of Canada to use Web 2.0 to communicate with them. Source: http://www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/display-afficher.do?id=1228425074053&lang=eng

16, 958, 800: number of  active Facebook accounts in Canada as of October 2010. 50, 23  % of people in Canada use Facebook. As of October, 2010, Facebook had 535, 300, 320 users worldwide. Source: http://www.facebakers.com/countries-with-facebook/, http://www.facebakers.com/blog/77-usa-vs-canada-on-facebook/

Canada ranks third in the world for  active Twitter users, making up 5.69% of all Twitter users. As of April, 2010, Twitter had 105,779,710 registered users, 300,000 new users sign up per day and 37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet. Source: http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

Social networking is more popular than email. In 2008, 67% of Internet users (globally)  accessed social networks compared to 65% that used email. Source: http://www.facebakers.com/blog/77-usa-vs-canada-on-facebook/

In 2007, 33% of Canadian Internet users reported having visited the Health Canada website in the preceding year. Sixteen percent visited the Public Health Agency of Canada website. (EKOS, 2008)

What is available to parents on the page and can I trust the information?

Information provided on the Facebook page will consist of information made available on the new website healthycanadians.gc.ca/kids. This is a "one stop" location for parents looking for information from Government of Canada experts on consumer products, food, medication, chemical & toy safety; nutrition & healthy eating; food allergies, injury prevention; physical activity; childhood obesity; vehicle and road safety; Cyber-safety; bullying prevention; emergency preparedness and more.

How is Health Canada going to manage the comments posted to the Facebook page? How will negative dialogue be handled?

Comments on the Facebook page will be reviewed on a daily basis to ensure that they adhere to the comments policy.This policy is available on the Healthy Canadians Facebook page. Comments will be deleted if they are considered to be off-topic, of a promotional nature, or falsely claiming to originate from a well-known person. They will also be removed if they contain language that is obscene, profane, threatening, defamatory or categorized as hate speech. It is important to note that Health Canada will not be engaging in the conversation (at this time), but will be allowing the conversation to occur on the Fan page. "Corrective blogging" tactics will be used to provide links to factual information from healthycanadians.gc.ca/kids when required.

How is Health Canada going to draw parents to the Facebook page?

Parents will be drawn to the Facebook page through links on the healthycanadians.gc.ca/kids website, through internet advertising that includes targeted ads on Facebook, social media platforms, such as the Health Canada's Twitter account, and through links encountered on affiliated websites and sites of those who wish to support the campaign.

How is Health Canada going update this Facebook page?

Health Canada will be responsible for posting current informative on Children's Health and Safety. The Facebook page will be populated following an editorial calendar and will spotlight pre-determined topics for each week. It will follow the same editorial calendar as the website and will also address important related issues raised in the news.