The online health misinformation machine
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Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
The public is increasingly turning to the internet with questions about their health. But for every credible answer, there’s a flood of misleading — and sometimes dangerous — misinformation.
Why it matters: Getting health advice has never been faster, but figuring out what’s trustworthy has never been harder.
- Many of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement's core ideas — from vaccine skepticism to rejecting seed oils to promoting raw milk — mirror the content health and wellness influencers push today. But there are few signs that scientists or licensed medical professionals are vetting the messages beforehand.
Zoom in: For decades, public health organizations have spread their messages through TV ads, press conferences and public service campaigns.
- But “information is so much more democratized now. It’s harder for these slower-moving communication mechanisms to compete,” says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “People have questions and those questions are not necessarily getting answers in a way that makes sense to them.”
Enter the health influencers — endlessly posting about breakfast routines, supplements and parenting hacks.
- Some share helpful tips, disclaimers included. Others spread half-truths or flat-out falsehoods that rack up millions of views.
- While health influencers have been gaining traction for several years, MAHA is giving many of them an even bigger platform — and more legitimacy.
By the numbers: Researchers at the University of Chicago tried to quantify the proliferation of health misinformation on TikTok in a recent study.
- They focused on #sinustok and found that nearly half (44%) of the videos about sinusitis contained false claims — most from influencers with no medical training.
Zoom out: That’s just one corner of the platform. From #diabetestok to #babytok to #diettok, there’s a rabbit hole for every health concern. And beyond TikTok, Instagram feeds, Reddit threads and Facebook groups are full of questionable advice or debunked theories.
Case in point: In one viral video, a homemaker with more than a million followers questioned why infants shouldn’t eat honey “if it’s natural.” Doctors scrambled to explain: Honey can cause infant botulism, a rare but deadly illness.
- Across social media platforms, influencers of all stripes are promoting raw milk, a product that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also backed. But raw milk has caused serious illness and death, and consuming it raises risk of exposure to bacteria like E. coli and listeria.
- And there are communities on Facebook and Instagram built around wellness and meditation that seamlessly slip into anti-vaccine content, the Washington Post reports. Vaccines remain the No. 1 subject of misleading health claims, the Conversation notes.
What to watch: Health influencers and online communities aren’t going anywhere, Sell says.
- There are already doctors and public health experts joining online platforms themselves to try to combat the falsehoods and spread science-backed info in a fun, digestible way.
- “We need to adapt,” Sell says. “This is how people are getting access to health information so what we need to do is move forward and say, 'OK, well, here’s good information.’”
