From #diabetestok to #sinustok, TikTok has garnered millions of views on videos covering health information. But that information is not always accurate or even safe.
Around 44% of TikTok content related to sinus infections, for instance, featured incorrect information, according to a recent study. Some of the videos promoted treatments researchers deemed dangerous.
“There is high-quality and factual information out there on social media platforms such as TikTok, but it may be very difficult to distinguish this from information disseminated by influencers that can actually be harmful,” senior study author Dr. Christopher Roxbury, MD, said in a news release.
Roxbury and other University of Chicago researchers analyzed TikTok’s health information for trends in quality to determine how much medical misinformation was on the social media platform. Nearly half of those analyzed were nonfactual, and many were from nonmedical influencers.
“I frequently have patients in the clinic asking me questions about things they saw online or on social media, and I have found that many times the information has steered patients in the wrong direction,” Roxbury said. “In some cases, I see patients who have already sought out and undergone such treatment without any benefit; in rarer cases, they’ve been harmed.”
When analyzing content related to sinus infections, researchers discovered TikTok videos showed a trend of people shoving entire cloves of garlic up their noses to relieve congestion — a decidedly bad idea.
“Just to put it out there — don’t put garlic in your nose,” fellow study author Rose Dimitroyannis said in a news release. “It wasn’t coming from a bad place, but as many trends do, it tended to become quite unsafe.”
Nonmedical influencers with more than 10,000 followers delivered content that featured nonfactual health information nearly 60% of the time, while videos from medical professionals were nonfactual 15% of the time. That’s why Dimitroyannis said health care professionals interested in content creation can have a significant positive impact on the internet.
“If you’re a healthcare expert with any interest in content creation, you could make a difference,” she said. “Someone could see your video and get the health information they need instead of seeing something that could hurt them.”
