It is with great pleasure that I write my first editorial for this amazing issue on social media. The idea of this issue came to me in 2019, inspired by two special colleagues.

I had social media accounts even before I became a medical writer. I recall setting up a Facebook account in 2005 and a Twitter account in 2006. This was followed by LinkedIn a few years later when I started freelancing. Take note – I said I had the accounts. But I seldom, if ever, posted anything. I was more of a passive observer who viewed social media as a frivolous pastime. It wasn’t until 2019 that I became an active user.

When I met Melvin Sanicas, MD, in 2019 (see interview p. 16), he was already a social media powerhouse, strongly advocating for science. In a kind of “reverse mentorship”, millennial Melvin encour aged me, a boomer, to share on LinkedIn topics I feel strongly about, including planetary health, sustainability, and research transparency.

Diana Ribeiro helped me take my LinkedIn activities to the next level. When I first met her at the 2019 autumn EMWA conference in Malmö, Sweden, she introduced me to the concept of pre - scheduling social media posts (check out Mariana Rickmann’s article on the topic on p. 40). She even followed up a few days later with a self-made “how to” video clip, the kind that even dummies like me could follow step by step. I was hooked, and the idea of a social media issue of Medical Writing was born. And Diana was the ideal guest editor.