TikTok is full of bogus, potentially dangerous medical advice

TikTok is the new doctor’s office, quickly becoming a go-to platform for medical advice. Unfortunately, much of that advice is pretty sketchy.

A new report by the healthcare software firm Tebra found 45% of medical advice on TikTok to be false or misleading. Some categories were worse offenders than others, with TikTok videos about alternative medicine having the most inaccuracies, with 67% of posts flagged as misleading. (See: putting onions in your socks to cure a cold, or sticking garlic cloves up your nose for a sinus infection.) Women’s health and general health topics weren’t much better, with 54% of advice in each category being inaccurate.

Mental health content on TikTok had the lowest misinformation rate at 31%. Wellness and self-care videos were slightly worse at 37%, while chronic illness advice was up to 39%. More views also doesn’t equate to more reliable information, with videos over 5 million views found to be 14% more likely to spread false information compared to those with under one million views.

Among the misleading claims on TikTok, the three most common include quick-fix weight loss tricks, misinformation around vaccines’ long term effects on fertility and cure-all daily supplements. While some creators use scare tactics to discourage actions like wearing masks, getting vaccinated, or using birth control, others, posing as medical “experts,” cash in by promoting diets, supplements, and treatments that are ineffective at best, and harmful at worst.

With 17% of Americans trusting TikTok as much as doctors, and 7% trusting it even more, there are serious risks involved when it comes to seeking medical advice online. Given that nearly half of U.S. TikTok users are under 30, the app becomes a perfect storm for misleading advice targeting a young and impressionable audience. There’s also no easy way to verify if these so-called experts have the credentials they claim, leaving users to rely on unvetted information.

Consumers who blindly follow unverified health advice online are setting themselves up for trouble. The best advice? Trust your instincts. If a health claim sounds too good to be true, it probably is.