Bottaro: Stop using internet 'doctors' as healthcare providers
The age of internet 'doctors' and self-diagnosis is doing far more harm than good, with some people even developing illness or chronic disease as a result
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You can find anything on social media. From information about the best places to travel to whether you have undiagnosed attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it’s all there at the touch of your fingers.
Unfortunately, anyone can say anything on there, and for better (or far worse) that open-stage opinion machine isn’t exactly where you should be getting your health information.
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Some healthcare professionals may use social media for good. According to research, many medical influencers provide science-backed details regarding new and upcoming treatments, spread awareness about chronic diseases, offer actionable tips about remedies that could help with minor ailments, provide mental health advice on how to combat the symptoms of anxiety or depression, or even debunk other health claims made in those not-so-reputable videos. It’s a long list of the good that can be shared on social media regarding health.
However, for every good doctor you can find on social media, there are 100 bad ones, spreading blatant lies about your health.
But when you open to doom scroll through another round of posts and you see people proclaiming their newly diagnosed autism or ADHD because they saw a “put a finger down” video, it’s hard to discern between the doctors who are utilizing social media to help and those people that are just in it to find their place in the algorithm.
Because of that, using the internet as your source for diagnostics is a slippery slope that could bring much more harm into your life than good.
The rise of the faux health influencer
Influencers have been leveraging social media since people realized they could monetize their content. But TikTok stars, Instagram models, and people who have a niche focus for their content, such as comedy, real-life advice, or selling products, aren’t doing anyone any harm. They’re using the platform in a way that it was, in today’s modern age, intended.
The health side of social media is far more nefarious, a new field of influencing that has taken off since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As it stands today, new ethical boundaries are being pushed to their limits, all in the name of monetary gain.
For example, roughly 45 per cent of medical advice found on TikTok is either completely false or misleading to viewers. In terms of what type of medical advice, it was found that 67 per cent of people who’ve taken in alternative medicine information were doing so without the knowledge that it wasn’t accurate, and 31 per cent of all mental health advice is not in line with the truth.
When it comes to women’s health, 54 per cent is false, and sexual reproductive health follows closely behind at 50 per cent. Physical fitness, men’s health, chronic illness, and wellness and self-care are all on the list as well, with figures of misleading information ranging from 37 per cent to 43 per cent.
The significantly scary part of all this is that viral videos, those seen by the most eyes, are 14 per cent more likely to be completely wrong.
Self-diagnosing and treating based on misinformation
I’m not one to hinder free speech, but when people watch these videos and leave feeling like they’ve got themselves and their health all figured out, it can lead to harmful consequences. For example, a recent survey found that close to 10 per cent of Gen Z’ers who use TikTok for medical advice experienced worsened health issues as a direct result of the misinformation they were fed through their phone.
According to an article on Healthline, one such incident occurred when a TikTok video emerged encouraging people to stare at the sun, claiming it was good for their health. A young woman did what the video instructed and was left with permanent damage to her retinas.
Another trend in the mental health space sees people diagnosing themselves with conditions, such as bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADHD. There are a few things wrong with this.
First, the validity of these conditions is mocked when someone decides that they have a disorder simply because they have one or two personality traits similar to someone who has it on TikTok. Secondly, it leaves people convinced they have conditions but with no confirmed diagnosis to act on, which is a surefire way to avoid adequate treatment and get the help they need. This leads to treatment avoidance, which can worsen health conditions to the point of severe.
Lastly, people who self-diagnose may engage in harmful behaviours or therapies that don’t apply to them, leading to further compounded health issues in the long run.
Physical health isn’t safe either. A medical doctor from the United States was reported to have had to sit down with a few of his patients to avoid following the “laxative for weight loss” trend found on TikTok because the risks of kidney failure and dehydration were not mentioned in the many videos of influencers calling the over-the-counter drug a cheaper version of Ozempic.
So, as it seems, there is a war on mental and physical health coming from the social media sphere, and it’s coming from people that a lot of us see as trustworthy because they have a lot of followers and likes.
Health-related content is making you sick
Everyone wants to belong. It’s a part of human nature, and social media has been a catalyst to helping people find their tribe, so to speak. When it comes to health, people can connect with individuals who have had similar lived experiences, allowing them to feel more connected and less isolated, which is a great thing.
But what if you don’t have a health condition, and it seems like everyone around you does because of the self-diagnosis uptick found on social media platforms?
Research suggests that this has led to two new phenomena aptly referred to as Mass social media-induced illness and Munchausen by internet, a form of Munchausen’s syndrome directly caused by the new age of online healthcare. Munchausen’s, if you don’t know, is a mental health disorder that develops when someone lies about their physical or mental health to gain sympathy, attention, and, you guessed it, connection to others.
Essentially, people will either begin to feel symptoms psychogenically from viewing illness-related content, or they will fake it so that they, too, can be part of the club. Either way, both will experience worsened health because of it, because they will either view videos until they develop an illness, or they will develop Munchausen’s syndrome, which in and of itself is a mental health condition.
It doesn’t matter which way it shakes out; the illness-related content being viewed by some people is making them sick.
This is all to say that people really should put down their phones and get out into the real world, because while there have been studies proving that social media can harm your mental health, it really goes so much deeper than that if you’re following healthcare influencers that have zero interest in your wellbeing and are only doing it for their bottom line.
