Misleading Information About Popular Medical Tests on Social Media

Is your social media feed making you think you’re not on top of your health or trying to sell you a test that you don’t actually need? As more people turn to social media for health advice, influencers are increasingly promoting medical tests that promise early detection and empowerment. But a complex reality is hiding behind the slick reels and personal testimonials. As public health researchers concerned about issues of low-value care (health care that is unnecessary, ineffective, or does not improve health outcomes), we wanted to see what influencers are saying about popular, yet controversial, medical tests.

We looked at five tests: full-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans; genetic tests claiming to identify early signs of 50 cancers; blood tests for testosterone levels; the anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) or “egg-timer” test, which surveys a woman’s egg count; and the gut microbiome test.

While these tests might be helpful for some, we chose them because they all carry the risk of overdiagnosis for healthy people. That’s when you’re diagnosed with something that wouldn’t have caused you problems in the first place. This can lead to harm from unnecessary treatments with physical and psychological side effects. Overdiagnosis also wastes scarce health care resources.

Posts about the five medical tests came from a wide range of accounts—from the everyday girl next door to medical doctors to mega influencers—with a combined total of close to 200 million followers (median of 24,200 followers). Of the nearly 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts we looked at, the vast majority were completely misleading. Overall, the posts overemphasized the benefits of the tests and failed to mention possible harm.

Evidence-based posts on medical tests do exist, but they are few and far between.

Specifically, we found that:

• 87% of posts mentioned test benefits, but only 15% mentioned potential harms;
• Only 6% mentioned the risk of overdiagnosis;
• Only 6% mentioned scientific evidence;
• 34% used personal stories to promote the tests;
• 68% of the influencers and account holders had explicit financial interests tied to the tests.

The tests in this study were being promoted under the guise of early screening, as a way to take control of your health, with many posts appealing to people’s emotions to encourage them to get tested when it isn’t necessary. For example, saying things like “knowledge is power” and “you deserve to be healthy”.

Some good news? Posts from medical doctors, posts mentioning scientific evidence, and posts from influencers with no financial ties to the tests were more balanced overall. They were more likely to mention the harms and less likely to just promote the tests.

Our findings add to the growing body of evidence showing that misleading health and medical information is widespread on social media. Evidence-based posts on medical tests do exist, but they are few and far between.

This is the first study to show that social media is indeed a potential new driver of overdiagnosis, making it more evident than ever that we need stronger solutions to tackle this issue. Current efforts to stop misleading health and medical information on social media are clearly not cutting it.

While encouraging the public to be more critical about health and medical information they see online is important, placing the responsibility on individual social media users to figure out what is true or not is unfair. Navigating misleading information is tricky, even for those with adequate health literacy.

There is a broad need among health professionals, academics, and policymakers to recognize how complex the online information environment really is, including what is driving the production of misleading information and how the public may be influenced by it. In the meantime, governments and health and medical regulators must work to put in place stricter regulations to stop misleading information from being created and shared in the first place. This is especially urgent as Meta abandons fact-checking. Enhanced regulations in this space would help protect the public from getting sold potentially harmful medical tests and treatments they don’t need.