I've seen the effect of medical misinformation on social media described as "Munchausens by TikTok," which captures pithily the image of everyone drowning in sleazy, pseudoscientific wellness content, becoming obsessed with fictitious problems and minor ailments. But on reflection, thinking about it like that only compounds the problem, doesn't it?
The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Wellness Industry Is Making Us Sick, reports Jonathan N. Stea at The Walrus.
Marco Zenone is a public health researcher who studies misinformation and online portrayals of health and wellness issues. A few years ago, he wanted to study the usefulness and accuracy of mental health TikTok videos. When he asked whether I'd be interested in joining his team, I didn't hesitate. We took a sample of the top 1,000 TikTok videos with the hashtag #mentalhealth from a specific time frame in 2021 and then analyzed the content. Most videos involved users sharing their personal stories, thoughts, or perspectives, and over one-third contained advice or information presented as factual. When we analyzed the videos with advice and information—which were watched over 1 billion times—we found that 67 percent could be considered useful but 33 percent were misleading. Some of the misleading ones parroted anti-psychiatry tropes, such as the idea that medications aren't helpful and "are for profit only." Alarmingly, the misleading videos also received more views, likes, comments, and shares than the ones we classified as useful. Our findings are consistent with other studies showing that TikTok videos contain high amounts of misinformation about more specific health topics, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, prostate cancer, and COVID-19.
The "evolving, deceptive language" is of particular interest. The euphemistic evasion of criticism or even definition goes to the top.
The [government-funded!] Office of Alternative Medicine was first established in 1991. It then became the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 1998. When it transformed to its latest flavour, in 2014, as the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, dropping the word "alternative," it was criticized for attempting continually to dodge the fact that it repeatedly and unethically funds scientifically implausible studies, such as investigating the effect of distant prayer in the treatment of AIDS and energy healing in the treatment of prostate cancer.
The tricks of the trade are useful in politics and religion too. Here at Boing Boing, Jennifer Sandlin regularly covers the conspirituality beat.
Previously:
• How Tik Tok amplifies the consumerist fever dream of conspirituality
• Conspirituality: A podcast that dismantles New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis
• Wellness influencers are convincing people to shove coffee up their butts
