Perception and use of reversible contraceptive methods in Germany: A social listening analysis.

Currently, there are a variety of contraceptive products available in the market. To understand how users perceive them and how their interest evolves over time, we analyzed social media posts from Urbia, a German Internet platform. We scraped posts between 2016 and 2021 from the "child-desire" and "contraception" forums and analyzed the relative frequency of mentions of different contraceptive methods. We also looked at 1000 individual posts from 1000 different users, analyzed method switches and the problems associated with individual methods of use. The oral pill was the most frequently mentioned method of contraception followed by natural family planning methods, condom, hormonal coil, and copper/gold coil. Over the last 5 years however, the mention of the pill dropped, whereas the mentions of natural family planning and copper or gold coil increased. Further analysis of individual posts showed most women migrating from the pill to other non-hormonal methods such as natural family planning and condom. Almost all migrations to natural family planning were from the pill and most migrations to non-hormonal intrauterine devices such as the coil were from hormonal methods. The most common problem associated with the pill and non-hormonal intrauterine devices was side effects. Through this analysis we show that social media serves as a useful tool to monitor contraceptive prevalence and attitudes within a large population in a very short span of time. Our findings give policy makers an idea on the topics where more counseling and education may be required to help women and couples find their best suited method of contraception.