TikTok Riddled With Misleading Info on Health: Study

April 25, 2024

Young people researching health topics on TikTok will find an alarming amount of misinformation on the platform, a new study says.

About 44% of TikTok videos related to sinusitis contained non-factual information, researchers reported recently in the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Further, almost half of the videos came from “non-medical influencers” – content creators with more than 10,000 followers who did not identify themselves as medical professionals.

These videos sometimes promote genuinely dangerous “treatments,” the researchers added.

At the very least, the videos cause confusion or lead people to delay effective care in favor of half-baked alternative therapies. Healthday