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I’ve been on the consumer health beat for a few months now. That means I stand directly in the path of a lot of strikingly bad “wellness” advice on social media. For example: Take potato juice instead of antibiotics for strep throat (what? no); douse yourself in beer for a better tan (ouch — use sunscreen or stay in the shade); scoop dry protein powder directly into your mouth (bad idea!).
It also means I think a lot about the consequences of the bullshit fire hose. People are getting hurt, and experts, struck with horror at the spectacle, are sinking countless hours and dollars into attempts at a fix. A variety of scientists and health care providers are trying to flood the zone with debunking content. However, it’s not at all clear that the content is reaching or changing many minds among those most susceptible to health misinformation.
As someone relatively new to doing debunking work, I hate it. It is boring, and it is endless. The “one weird hack” videos influencers barf up seem to come in multipacks of a thousand; before I’ve whack-a-moled even one of them, 10 more have cropped up. And because I’m not convinced that what’s written actually reaches the people most likely to believe the health bullshit they see online, the work often feels pointless.
There’s plenty of fault to go around for this bleak state of affairs. I blame the snake oil salespeople who profit off others’ desperation and confusion, and the tech platforms that allow them to proliferate. I blame the regulators and legislators who drag their feet on bringing these massive corporations into check. I blame the underfunding of public education, which would otherwise be teaching kids better critical thinking skills. I blame the government agencies whose best intentions still haven’t led to effective communication, and the politicians and other public figures who undermine those agencies for clout.
But I have to admit that, in my heart of hearts, I also find myself wanting to shake the consumers who blindly follow the internet’s unvetted health “advice” without interrogating its source. Sorry, but you’re going to trust a rando shilling a “parasite cleanse” and telling you to drink laundry detergent — and not the government scientist who’s literally forbidden from monetizing engagement? I am occasionally guilty of wanting to give up on humanity.
This is not a response I’m proud of. After all, the public is on the pointy end of some of the most skilled attention manipulators of all time. We know that the rising reach and power of health misinformation is directly tied to a very reasonable distrust in systems, including government, the health care industry, and scientific experts. Certain players in each of these institutions have serious integrity problems, and they may well have failed many people in very personal ways. I don’t question anyone’s right and reason to view these systems with healthy skepticism.
But friends, we simply cannot go on like this. You and I both know it: In a recent survey conducted by health communications firm Edelman, 63 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds were worried about health misinformation.(Notably, that’s the same demographic that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, is most likely to go to social media for health information or advice.)
Furthermore, people are well aware of the harms of believing the bullshit, and have insight into how that bullshit has harmed them personally. Fifty-five percent of young adults in the Edelman survey regret a health decision they made based on misinformation they got from an ad, their family or friends, or a content creator online.
Still, the bullshit fire hose persists. It’s insidious — more often than not, misinformation finds people by oozing into their feeds uninvited. While it’s more likely to leave people confused than convinced, it plants a seed of lingering doubt that can have an impact when it comes to making health decisions further down the line.
In other words, seeing a TikTok about shoving a garlic clove in your nose might not send you running for the crisper drawer — but the next time you hear about it, you might react with a “huh” instead of a “hell no.”
Try as they might, public health is having a hell of a time keeping up with all the nonsense out there, especially when so much of it is in video form. The rules of engagement health experts have created to help consumers vet written health information don’t always apply to video, and simple tools to help people assess the quality of short videos about health are scarce.
So what’s a person on the internet to do next time social media serves up “one weird trick” that promises a jacked bod, a dewy complexion, immaculately balanced hormones, and a cancer-free eternity?
First, let your bullshit meter guide you. If a wild health claim is too good to be true, it probably is. It’s also a red flag when the person making the claim is relying on language or visuals that elicit super-intense emotional reactions like fear and outrage, Cambridge University misinformation expert Sander van der Linden recently told the New York Times.
So what’s a person on the internet to do next time social media serves up “one weird trick” that promises a jacked bod, a dewy complexion, immaculately balanced hormones, and a cancer-free eternity?
Is the person sharing the information trying to sell you something by making a health claim? If so, that’s a concerning sign, and you should be especially careful to further check the accuracy of what they’re saying.
When in doubt, Google anything that causes even a slight tingle of your spidey senses. Has the claim been verified by news sites that value accuracy? (Here’s some guidance on determining whether a news site is trustworthy, and a list of news vetting resources from the American Library Association.) You can also check specific assertions on one of many fact-checking websites, including FactCheck.org, and on the sites of medical institutions — the Cleveland Clinic does some good work in this space. You can also take an offline approach by asking your own health care provider, or enlisting a local or university library to help you fact-check certain claims.
Of course, all of the groups involved here should be doing a lot more to protect us — and if we’re obliged to do hand-to-hand combat with a ceaseless stream of health misinformation, we need to be doing a much more sophisticated job of it.
Better education around news literacy that teaches young people to critically assess everything they read online — basically, pre-bunking — is a good start. Government agencies and other health institutions could also get far better at communicating information to people in the ways they want and need to hear it.
“The problem is that my videos … are, like, an hour long, and they’re super boring,” Kristen Bibbins-Domingo, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a leading health research publication, said while speaking at Aspen Ideas: Health. “And all of the other ones — they’re super interesting and engaging! I don’t need to be in the business of dumbing down ideas,” she said, but “consumers are consuming.”
Good information can be engineered to seep into users’ feeds just as often as bad information does. But for that to happen, both government employees and health care providers need to be enabled to do this work far more effectively. That means respecting and compensating the debunking work scientists and providers do on social media and training them to make content that’s as likely to go viral as the worst nonsense in the fire hose.
There’s always the possibility that something will compel social media platforms to take some responsibility and actually do something to protect the public from misinformation. But in the meantime, please listen to that faint buzzing noise you now hear almost constantly. It’s your bullshit meter, it’s working harder than ever — and your health could depend on whether you’re paying attention.
