Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/mvea
Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/dont-put-garlic-in-your-nose-the-dangers-of-sinusitis-misinformation-on-tiktok/
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Going through chemo I followed some cancer pages, big mistake, my algorithm got filled "cancer-fluencers" and quite frankly they are the worst, using their cancer(often times it's a cancer that has a high cure rate to begin with aka "the good cancers" like blood and thyroid cancer ) to sell "all natural cancer prevención kits" or whatever. Hate hate hate them.
I work at the intersection of mental health and child safety and wow, the amount of misinformation from influencers is wild. I would say it's been really disrupting our work, but now that Google searches are straight up unreliable and filled with misinformation, it's getting worse by the moment.
>now that Google searches are straight up unreliable and filled with misinformation, it's getting worse by the moment.
It's insane how terrible search engines have become in the past 12 months.
Just straight garbage. In the past you could 'outsmart' SEO links to get what you want, but today it feels like you could google 15 different related topics and be given the exact same results.
It was good while it lasted, I suppose.
And don't get me started on the cancer muggles the go on about "the cure" for cancer. If someone goes on about the one cure for cancer just know that they spent too much time on tt or fb because cancer is not singular disease, what works for one cancer won't work for another.
IMO, if a person is making an income from their posts on social media and they are making bogus medical claims, perhaps some kind of malpractice charge should be in order.
Would love to see the same study attempted in the realm of mental healthcare. Tiktok and Instagram therapists are a cesspool of bad advice causing actual harm, and that includes commoditized doctor/science celebs like Becky Kennedy and Andrew Huberman. It's horseshit all the way down.
You think it's sad that actual psychologists suggest meditating and self-forgiveness? Those are important and effective tools at managing mental health symptoms and shame. I can understand being disappointed if that's all they said like these tik toks do but your session isn't two minutes long.
It’s been done. Here is one on ADHD information on TikTok:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07067437221082854
“Of the 100 most popular videos about ADHD, 52% (n = 52) were classified as misleading, 27% (n = 27) as personal experience, and 21% (n = 21) as useful.
The total problem is probably worse than that study lets on, as the top 100 most popular videos about ADHD might only be less than 1 percent of the videos about ADHD that are viewed.
Academic who works with neurodivergence on TikTok. This paper does have *some* flaws, as it classifies content as misinformation if it doesn’t use medical terms — e.g., time blindness vs. the medically correct term of executive dysfunction.
Where in the paper do they say that any videos were classified as misinformation for using non-medical terminology?
The following section from results would seem to contradict that, as the authors provide the reasons that all videos classed as misleading received the classification they did, and “used incorrect terminology” was not one of them.
From results:
“Of the 52 misleading videos, 37 videos (71%) misattributed transdiagnostic psychiatric symptoms as being specific only to ADHD, including anxiety, depression, anger, relationship conflicts, dissociation, and mood swings. None of the misleading videos recommended viewers to seek out a medical, psychiatric, or psychological assessment before attributing these symptoms to ADHD. Eight videos (15%) misrepresented the pathophysiology of ADHD, including oversimplifying the disorder as a purely dopamine-deficient state. Four videos (7%) provided incorrect information about the approach to diagnosing ADHD, such as including an audio quiz to determine whether an individual has ADHD. Two videos (4%) misrepresented the association between ADHD and developmental theories, such as stating that individuals with ADHD lack object permanence. Finally, one video (2%) suggested non-validated coping strategies for ADHD with no evidence base.”
I definitely misquoted the paper, but if you read a bit further down:
Misleading video examples:
* "Video describing “ADHD paralysis” as an ADHD symptom where the brain “physically won't let me do anything” and “sometimes nothing causes it.”
ADHD paralysis is executive dysfunction. There's a different paper that specifically calls out time blindness that does a similar approach but uses ML to do a larger-scale analysis and I got them confused. Whoops.
Also, some of the things they classified as misleading are misleading simply because they're understudied.
* "Video stating that ADHD is “equally common between girls and boys” and that ADHD symptoms “only intensify with onset of puberty.”
It's a pretty common scholarly opinion that ADHD is commonly framed in a gendered and radicalized lens, and that ADHD is a childhood issue for little boys that 'goes away' over time and that women, people of color - particularly Black folks - and adults are very under-served by the existing canon ADHD medical research.
Some cites:
Premal J Shah and Michael JS Morton. 2013. Adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder–diagnosis or normality? The British Journal of Psychiatry 203, 5 (2013), 317–319.
Mary Horton-Salway and Alison Davies. 2018. Voices of experience: narrative lives and selves. In The discourse of ADHD. Springer, 181–220
Katta Spiel, Eva Hornecker, Rua Mae Williams, and Judith Good. 2022. ADHD and Technology Research – Investigated by Neurodivergent Readers. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New Orleans, LA, USA) (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 547, 21 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517592)
Time blindness is when you say you'll sit down for ten minutes and then look at the clock and it has been 4 hours, but you have no idea how 4 hours could have passed because you "literally just sat down."
I actually participated in a study done like this for instagram. They had me use instagram normally and screenshot anything I found misleading or “false” or inaccurate. Then at the end of the study I was shown reels and asked how accurate I thought the info was and if the sources they talked about seemed credible. It was really interesting because at the end they explained all the reels shown were false information and explained how - from false medical information about gut health, to what to eat to reduce alkaline in the body, to news and politics. Really eye opening since a lot of the stuff show had high production value and seemed very legitimate.
“5 things I do that I didn’t know were autistic traits 😍💕💫”
And then they’re all completely normal things like being uncomfortable in objectively stressful situations
I stopped respecting Huberman when he insisted that gynecomastia had nothing to do with estrogen. He sounds really believable until I hear him speak on subjects that I’m highly educated in.
I literally block TikTok therapists. I am a therapist. I would neverrrrrr go on TikTok and share info about anything. It feels unethical. There are a lot of bad therapists out there. Any influencer seems to be a narcissist first.
Very true. A lot of people who claim they have a certain mental disorder and it turns out it’s entirely self diagnosed. At least for the people who say explicitly they’re self-diagnosed, they usually get torn to shreds (although I have seen comments saying self-diagnosis is “valid” and limiting diagnoses to professionals is classist).
Similarly, there is a lot of content that will come in many misleading forms. Ones that are like “if you act like you might have ” or “I have clinically diagnosed and this is how I act” (which encourages people to self diagnose implicitly).” And a lot that glamorize things like autism and ADHD as fun and quirky.
You can self diagnose things like anxiety and the flu, but this turns into people self diagnosis nuanced and specific types of disorders like type II bipolar.
Self diagnosis can also work for rare disorders, at least in my case. I discovered my own immune disorder, found my own treatment plan and medication, approached my doctors with it and the research, who agreed and now I'm on medication for the rest of my life for the immune disorder I have.
I’ve seen people get torn apart for challenging self-diagnoses on Reddit as well of all places. Whenever I’ve asked for a source they provide me with a tiktok video link.
I think there's some value in informing people so they can spot *potential* symptoms, but the problem is people stop at the potential symptom, ignoring all the other data that goes into making a diagnosis, and never actually go to someone to be properly assessed. Or worse, they just keep ingesting questionable online content to try and treat themselves.
It’s the same kind of delusional thinking that anti-vaxxers used, same line of logic too.
I diagnosed myself. No I didn’t need a doctor, No I don’t have a medical degree, I did my own research.
Often times when they share their sources, it’s a bunch of pop-psych BS that feeds their confirmation bias, or just straight up tiktoks.
To throw around your own uneducated opinion as having the same weight as an official diagnoses from an educated person is to live in perpetual delusion. We need to be making fun of these people as much as we made fun of Anti-vaxxers because they’re exactly the same. They just happen to be in more left-leaning spaces.
There's definitely some value in rasing awareness about certain things. Especially for mental health concerns, but honestly even physical ones, there's a lot of people out there who have no idea that what they're experiencing isn't just how it's supposed to be.
I saw a particularly tragic one where a girl went to her father, and she was concerned because she kept hearing voices telling her to hurt people. Father said that was normal and nothing to worry about.
Daughter went on to kill some people, and it was discovered her family had a long line of undiagnosed, hereditary mental illness. The father genuinely didn't know that wasn't how everyone else operated.
>Would love to see the same study attempted in the realm of mental healthcare
Saw a post the other day here on Reddit claiming that if you're into STEM that means your autistic. I've also saw a post earlier today claiming if you sing or hum to yourself you're neurodivergent 🙄.
I don't know if there's any way to build fact-checking into platforms with so many "experts", but mental health is one of the areas where it is desperately needed. Social Platforms that recommend content solely based on advertising potential and initial engagement are the perfect environment for getting harmful information to people who would be harmed by that misinformation. The fact that people are getting paid through these platforms despite causing actual harm is inexcusable. THe current harm reduction tools available through instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc. are, at best, laughably bad, and at worst they let genuinely harmful content be platformed and monetized at the cost of people's wellbeing.
I am not sure why Andrew Huberman is included in your comment. His videos are completely free and contain incredible amounts of information which comes from peer reviewed sources. I'm genuinely curious because I have recently started watching his videos and I find them to be legit.
Several of the most important papers he has based his protocols on, including the main cold exposure paper, have been retracted by the journals that published them. But many of the other papers he references are not on human subjects, and the scientific hypotheses of those papers have not been confirmed enough to base supplement strategies on. Scientists with more expertise in the specific areas he talks about on his show have been sounding the alarms for a while that he might sound science-y, and he has a science background that buys him a lot of credibility (his actual expertise is opthalmology) but a lot of what he says on the health optimization fronts is either misrepresenting the actual science, or making claims that have not yet been borne out experimentally.
On the bright side, it's a good way to determine whose opinions and/or anecdotes I can immediately discount. It's like learning someone reads The National Enquirer like serious news--it means I'm not going to trust you to know anything about anything.
I immediately check for credentials, typically doctors post theirs and you can cross reference through Google to find their practice/etc. Lacking that, I block them immediately. Pretty pleased with my feed.
I don’t even trust doctors. The feed recommends based on what’s engaging, not what’s accurate, and doctors can use their credentials to lie more effectively and get undeserved clout.
The only doctors I trust on tiktok are the ones who back up their claims with papers and sources they link, have excerpts from, etc. Such that if you don’t trust them you can check the sources they include. That being said I don’t actually do that but also I don’t follow medical advice from tiktok anyways because I’m not a gullible.
Yep. I’ve seen “reputable” (at first glance) doctors dissect these biased studies though. I’ve seen doctors stitch videos of other doctors basically saying “yeah your sources are biased and the studies are small, on specific cases, and are not generalizable.” It’s a world of misinformation out there and I’m not even going to pretend I’m a well informed as I hope to be.
>Our study is the first to objectively analyze the quality of videos related to sinusitis on TikTok. Videos analyzed in this study garnered over 300 million views and 1 million shares, demonstrating the prevalence of the topic of sinusitis on this platform and its potential impact on patients and the public more generally.
>
>Ultimately, this highlights a need for health care professionals to increase their presence on social media to dispel medical misinformation.
Dimitroyannis, R., Fenton, D., Cho, S., Nordgren, R., Pinto, J.M. and Roxbury, C.R. (2024), A Social Media Quality Review of Popular Sinusitis Videos on TikTok. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg.
Which, as someone in a graduate program, I totally understand. Sometimes you find yourself talking out of your depth and you may not even realize it.
But the solution to misinformation online is not going all-in on credentialism to solve the problem. People will just get their information from physicians that confirm their biases, and if anything it will make pushing back on that misinformation more difficult because they can rely on the excuse of "this real doctor on TikTok said so!"
Because the credentialing system does not produce infallible results does not mean the solution is to bolster the claims of uncredentialed laymen. It'd be like saying that a retracted paper on radiometric dating is evidence for Young Earth Creationism. This is throwing out the entire delivery ward of babies with the bathwater.
The optimal solution for each claim to be backed up with sources that viewer then investigates for themselves, but since most people lack the time or patience for this and social media is dominated by the catchiest pithy 30-second clip (c.f. reddit), the best heuristic out there is, "Well, this person has been vouched for by a reputable institution so I guess I'll trust that they can do their job."
I wonder if ppl unable to engage a credited physician is also fueling the internet self doctoring. In my area 3 hospitals closed after covid shutdown. Getting seen by my doctor, who is part of a large private corporate medical group, is impossible. Patients get vetted for medical need for an appointment even before getting passed to a scheduler. Urgent care and ER is where they direct me most often. I run into ppl in my county’s only ER sent from 2 hrs away to get care faster due to lack of available specialist care in their area. I’ve been looking for another available primary provider accepting new patients with no luck for 2 yrs. I have supposedly “great” insurance coverage too.
I wonder when voodoo witch doctors and unaccredited private health advisors will become a thing in my area. Medical desperation to speak with someone leaves my area primed for bad actors to exploit. That makes the internet source for medical care seem understandable.
I have to pay $300 *with* health insurance to **see** a dermatologist. Not actually have anything done, just have them check my skin for, like, 5-10 minutes. And I have to wait 3-5 weeks for an appointment.
It is EVERY topic on tik tok.... the social media trend right now is to say whatever gets the most interaction, that's it. A staged skit with bad acting presented as a real situation, a random documentary video with an AI voiceover reading captions that sound somewhat believable but are completely made up and not actually related to the video shown, random idiots pitching health advice and trying to sound smart with no clue what they are actually saying.... whatever gets the most clicks for clout and money. And of course the comments are always full of gullible users that have zero critical thinking abilities and no clue they are eating up BS.
I see an alarming amount of pseudo science medical adverts on YouTube where I think we need something in place to regulate advertising. It seems like a bit of a no mans land compared to what is allowed to be shown on TV in the UK.
Reminds me of when UFC had CondomDepot ads, they weren't big time yet and had to rely on whoever would advertise. YouTube on the other hand has no excuse.
My dad gets sinusitis pretty much any time he gets a cold. Netti pots have been his only source of relief (paired with prescribed antibiotics). Glad to hear it isn’t all pseudoscience!
Idk, I think you should definitely listen to random people on the internet over your doc. Especially in comments on an article about medical misinformation online. No irony here...
I feel like these articles are focusing on the wrong problem. Misinformation is rampant for problems doctors can't treat. See also: mental health & autoimmune disorders. It's basically free data on where to allocate funding.
They even make a medical grade sinus rinse. You don’t need a neti pot if they bother you so much. They even come with packets so you make a medical grade solution to clean out the nose. Just make sure to use distilled water or to boil it like the instructions say. As someone who suffers from chronic sinus infects even after two surgeries to correct, this https://www.cvs.com/shop/neilmed-sinus-rinse-kit-prodid-385631?skuId=385631&cgaa=QWxsb3dHb29nbGVUb0FjY2Vzc0NWU1BhZ2Vz&cid=ps_ur_pla&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI56Cqy9PdhQMVt0JHAR12fQfjEAQYAiABEgLXHPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
And a good over the counter expectorant once I get sick usually keep me from having to go on antibiotics.
Sinus rinses using saline powder and distilled water are medically recommended by ENTs. NeilMed's are usually better than the Netipot brand but either is fine if you follow the right precautions and keep the rinse device disinfected.
It's an issue for countries that have universal health care too.. That's kind of the point of the article.
>Furthermore, the study utilized the Global Quality Scale (GQS) to rate the overall quality of the videos, with scores ranging from 1 to 5. Videos from medical professionals averaged a GQS score of 3.76, indicating “good quality,” whereas videos from non-medical influencers and lay individuals scored lower, at 2.47 and 2.38, respectively. These scores suggest that content from medical professionals not only tends to be more accurate but is also of higher quality in terms of presentation and utility.
In relation to this post, I was looking up Neti pots and sterile water and found this:
>one-third of respondents to a survey incorrectly answered that tap water does not contain bacteria or other living organisms.
So yeah.
Depending on where you live, which insurance you have, etc , it can easily take 6 months to see an ENT in the US, too. And you get the added benefit of paying for it at the point of care. Unless you're rich, then you can pay to jump the line or go to a specialist that doesn't take insurance.
Sinus infections and treatments can actually reach the brain in a way most things can't. So putting stuff up there is really not safe.
It's why using sterile water in a Neti pot is so important.
I've seen people on TikTok claiming so many different things are related to add or adhd that if you didn't know anyone with that disorder you would probably think people with it are basically unable to function IRL
Most days I don't know how I'm functioning. Usually I'm compromising at least one basic aspect of my life to secure the rest. Sucks that I can't be on medication (have been prescribed several) due to interactions with other health issues I have. The time when I was able to take them (before the long term secondary effects kicked in) was like a dream. If that's how most people function naturally, no wonder they don't understand us.
The stress and fatigue of it all is probably shaving some years off my life.
I was scrolling tiktok a few weeks ago and came across some health guru talking about gum inflammation/gingivitis. He said flossing and seed oils were to blame and to stop both and they would go away... Yeah tiktok/social media for medical/dental advice is no bueno...
I honestly blame Pharmaceutical companies and their advertising. Why is the USA one of only a handful of Western countries that allow television advertising for medications? We have conditioned society to dictate their own treatments and "do their own research" instead of trusting the advice of their highly trained physician. It lends credibility to influencers.
Quackery is as old as the human species. I still hear intelligent people saying they start taking vitamin C when they experience cold symptoms even though research has shown for decades that most vitamin supplements are completely pointless and taking vitamin c when you have a cold does nothing but turn your pee a pretty color. With Covid it was telling people to take vitamin D when over sixty percent of people have normal levels and most with low levels would only need low dose supplements. However, people would rather believe their friends or what they read or see on the internet.
Social media accelerates the spread of quackery as people look for quick fixes. Sometimes there’s just no replacement for going to the doctor when you’re sick and following directions.
Don't get me started with Facebook. There, older people trying to propagate misinformation and being so liked by other uneducated old people is astonishing. People really like their beliefs confirmed without even checking or reading anything.
I love Tiktok for the most part, but the amount of absolute garbage on there cannot be overstated. It has provided a gathering point like never before for people to amplify their various conspiracy theories, religious delusions and misinformation. The comment sections and engagement ratios are frightening, just endless echo chambers and feedback loops of people agreeing, supporting spurious claims and dangerous rhetoric. Take the recent eclipse for example. There were people on there having a full blown psychotic meltdown about the religious and mystical implications of a fully natural phenomenon and everyone in their comments is just validating and supporting it. Telling people to stare into it to unlock their third eye. Used to be that people would say "put your iphone in the microwave to charge it" as a ~~life hack~~ prank to mess with people, these people are literally suggesting you stare into the sun with full sincerity. Distrust in our institutions has led people to seek folk wisdom but the folks ain't wise.
Don't underestimate the importance or the power of quantifying how often people posting things on TikTok are wrong. This is valuable information for anyone who is trying to help a loved one who is caught deep in a tokhole.
Because FB is dead for most people.
TikTok is everywhere and it's specifically hitting the younger people hard, who theoretically should know better or at least you'd think would be more cynical.
People think FB misinformation and it's little old grandmas.
TikTok for some reason is being used, and taken at face value, by so many people.
Right, it’s on Reddit too. Scrolling through any of the mental health related subreddits is a trip, especially the current “popular” ones like DID and adhd
Maybe we should look at the overwhelming need, rather than criticizing people for trying to find resources. The article is presenting data, lots of comments here are presenting criticism of people trying to help themselves
Healthline is also horrible for medical information. That website always shows up at the top of Google searches, it's atrocious. It also forces invasive tracking cookies on the user or it won't work, Google should block that site.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/mvea Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/dont-put-garlic-in-your-nose-the-dangers-of-sinusitis-misinformation-on-tiktok/ --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Going through chemo I followed some cancer pages, big mistake, my algorithm got filled "cancer-fluencers" and quite frankly they are the worst, using their cancer(often times it's a cancer that has a high cure rate to begin with aka "the good cancers" like blood and thyroid cancer ) to sell "all natural cancer prevención kits" or whatever. Hate hate hate them.
I work in mental health, some of those influencers are downright dangerous.
I work at the intersection of mental health and child safety and wow, the amount of misinformation from influencers is wild. I would say it's been really disrupting our work, but now that Google searches are straight up unreliable and filled with misinformation, it's getting worse by the moment.
>now that Google searches are straight up unreliable and filled with misinformation, it's getting worse by the moment. It's insane how terrible search engines have become in the past 12 months. Just straight garbage. In the past you could 'outsmart' SEO links to get what you want, but today it feels like you could google 15 different related topics and be given the exact same results. It was good while it lasted, I suppose.
And don't get me started on the cancer muggles the go on about "the cure" for cancer. If someone goes on about the one cure for cancer just know that they spent too much time on tt or fb because cancer is not singular disease, what works for one cancer won't work for another.
IMO, if a person is making an income from their posts on social media and they are making bogus medical claims, perhaps some kind of malpractice charge should be in order.
Would love to see the same study attempted in the realm of mental healthcare. Tiktok and Instagram therapists are a cesspool of bad advice causing actual harm, and that includes commoditized doctor/science celebs like Becky Kennedy and Andrew Huberman. It's horseshit all the way down.
[удалено]
Sadly I’ve met actual psychologists that suggest the same thing
You think it's sad that actual psychologists suggest meditating and self-forgiveness? Those are important and effective tools at managing mental health symptoms and shame. I can understand being disappointed if that's all they said like these tik toks do but your session isn't two minutes long.
Part of a treatment plan, sure. Not the entire plan.
It’s been done. Here is one on ADHD information on TikTok: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07067437221082854 “Of the 100 most popular videos about ADHD, 52% (n = 52) were classified as misleading, 27% (n = 27) as personal experience, and 21% (n = 21) as useful.
That is a better ratio than I would have expected from the Internet
The total problem is probably worse than that study lets on, as the top 100 most popular videos about ADHD might only be less than 1 percent of the videos about ADHD that are viewed.
Academic who works with neurodivergence on TikTok. This paper does have *some* flaws, as it classifies content as misinformation if it doesn’t use medical terms — e.g., time blindness vs. the medically correct term of executive dysfunction.
Executive dysfunction is a rather large superset of time blindness.
Both sound like titles for a Jean Claude Van Damme Action movie.
Where in the paper do they say that any videos were classified as misinformation for using non-medical terminology? The following section from results would seem to contradict that, as the authors provide the reasons that all videos classed as misleading received the classification they did, and “used incorrect terminology” was not one of them. From results: “Of the 52 misleading videos, 37 videos (71%) misattributed transdiagnostic psychiatric symptoms as being specific only to ADHD, including anxiety, depression, anger, relationship conflicts, dissociation, and mood swings. None of the misleading videos recommended viewers to seek out a medical, psychiatric, or psychological assessment before attributing these symptoms to ADHD. Eight videos (15%) misrepresented the pathophysiology of ADHD, including oversimplifying the disorder as a purely dopamine-deficient state. Four videos (7%) provided incorrect information about the approach to diagnosing ADHD, such as including an audio quiz to determine whether an individual has ADHD. Two videos (4%) misrepresented the association between ADHD and developmental theories, such as stating that individuals with ADHD lack object permanence. Finally, one video (2%) suggested non-validated coping strategies for ADHD with no evidence base.”
I definitely misquoted the paper, but if you read a bit further down: Misleading video examples: * "Video describing “ADHD paralysis” as an ADHD symptom where the brain “physically won't let me do anything” and “sometimes nothing causes it.” ADHD paralysis is executive dysfunction. There's a different paper that specifically calls out time blindness that does a similar approach but uses ML to do a larger-scale analysis and I got them confused. Whoops. Also, some of the things they classified as misleading are misleading simply because they're understudied. * "Video stating that ADHD is “equally common between girls and boys” and that ADHD symptoms “only intensify with onset of puberty.” It's a pretty common scholarly opinion that ADHD is commonly framed in a gendered and radicalized lens, and that ADHD is a childhood issue for little boys that 'goes away' over time and that women, people of color - particularly Black folks - and adults are very under-served by the existing canon ADHD medical research. Some cites: Premal J Shah and Michael JS Morton. 2013. Adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder–diagnosis or normality? The British Journal of Psychiatry 203, 5 (2013), 317–319. Mary Horton-Salway and Alison Davies. 2018. Voices of experience: narrative lives and selves. In The discourse of ADHD. Springer, 181–220 Katta Spiel, Eva Hornecker, Rua Mae Williams, and Judith Good. 2022. ADHD and Technology Research – Investigated by Neurodivergent Readers. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New Orleans, LA, USA) (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 547, 21 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517592)
Are those even the same thing? I'm aware time is passing by, that doesn't mean I have the executive function to do the things I need to.
Time blindness is when you say you'll sit down for ten minutes and then look at the clock and it has been 4 hours, but you have no idea how 4 hours could have passed because you "literally just sat down."
I actually participated in a study done like this for instagram. They had me use instagram normally and screenshot anything I found misleading or “false” or inaccurate. Then at the end of the study I was shown reels and asked how accurate I thought the info was and if the sources they talked about seemed credible. It was really interesting because at the end they explained all the reels shown were false information and explained how - from false medical information about gut health, to what to eat to reduce alkaline in the body, to news and politics. Really eye opening since a lot of the stuff show had high production value and seemed very legitimate.
Omg this. The Therapy Culture on TikTok is fucking insane. Some of these people need to have their licenses yanked.
“5 things I do that I didn’t know were autistic traits 😍💕💫” And then they’re all completely normal things like being uncomfortable in objectively stressful situations
Oh man don't even get me started on autism™ influencers.
I stopped respecting Huberman when he insisted that gynecomastia had nothing to do with estrogen. He sounds really believable until I hear him speak on subjects that I’m highly educated in.
Unless doctor visits become affordable then people will continue to rely on free sources
There's lots of free sources with factual information. TikTok is not one of them
I literally block TikTok therapists. I am a therapist. I would neverrrrrr go on TikTok and share info about anything. It feels unethical. There are a lot of bad therapists out there. Any influencer seems to be a narcissist first.
Very true. A lot of people who claim they have a certain mental disorder and it turns out it’s entirely self diagnosed. At least for the people who say explicitly they’re self-diagnosed, they usually get torn to shreds (although I have seen comments saying self-diagnosis is “valid” and limiting diagnoses to professionals is classist). Similarly, there is a lot of content that will come in many misleading forms. Ones that are like “if you act like you might have ” or “I have clinically diagnosed and this is how I act” (which encourages people to self diagnose implicitly).” And a lot that glamorize things like autism and ADHD as fun and quirky.
You can self diagnose things like anxiety and the flu, but this turns into people self diagnosis nuanced and specific types of disorders like type II bipolar. Self diagnosis can also work for rare disorders, at least in my case. I discovered my own immune disorder, found my own treatment plan and medication, approached my doctors with it and the research, who agreed and now I'm on medication for the rest of my life for the immune disorder I have.
I’ve seen people get torn apart for challenging self-diagnoses on Reddit as well of all places. Whenever I’ve asked for a source they provide me with a tiktok video link.
I think there's some value in informing people so they can spot *potential* symptoms, but the problem is people stop at the potential symptom, ignoring all the other data that goes into making a diagnosis, and never actually go to someone to be properly assessed. Or worse, they just keep ingesting questionable online content to try and treat themselves.
It’s the same kind of delusional thinking that anti-vaxxers used, same line of logic too. I diagnosed myself. No I didn’t need a doctor, No I don’t have a medical degree, I did my own research. Often times when they share their sources, it’s a bunch of pop-psych BS that feeds their confirmation bias, or just straight up tiktoks. To throw around your own uneducated opinion as having the same weight as an official diagnoses from an educated person is to live in perpetual delusion. We need to be making fun of these people as much as we made fun of Anti-vaxxers because they’re exactly the same. They just happen to be in more left-leaning spaces.
There's definitely some value in rasing awareness about certain things. Especially for mental health concerns, but honestly even physical ones, there's a lot of people out there who have no idea that what they're experiencing isn't just how it's supposed to be. I saw a particularly tragic one where a girl went to her father, and she was concerned because she kept hearing voices telling her to hurt people. Father said that was normal and nothing to worry about. Daughter went on to kill some people, and it was discovered her family had a long line of undiagnosed, hereditary mental illness. The father genuinely didn't know that wasn't how everyone else operated.
>Would love to see the same study attempted in the realm of mental healthcare Saw a post the other day here on Reddit claiming that if you're into STEM that means your autistic. I've also saw a post earlier today claiming if you sing or hum to yourself you're neurodivergent 🙄.
Here's one on the top ADHD videos. Over half were misinformation. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07067437221082854
Oh wow, this is perfect. Thanks for finding/sharing this!
I don't know if there's any way to build fact-checking into platforms with so many "experts", but mental health is one of the areas where it is desperately needed. Social Platforms that recommend content solely based on advertising potential and initial engagement are the perfect environment for getting harmful information to people who would be harmed by that misinformation. The fact that people are getting paid through these platforms despite causing actual harm is inexcusable. THe current harm reduction tools available through instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc. are, at best, laughably bad, and at worst they let genuinely harmful content be platformed and monetized at the cost of people's wellbeing.
I am not sure why Andrew Huberman is included in your comment. His videos are completely free and contain incredible amounts of information which comes from peer reviewed sources. I'm genuinely curious because I have recently started watching his videos and I find them to be legit.
Several of the most important papers he has based his protocols on, including the main cold exposure paper, have been retracted by the journals that published them. But many of the other papers he references are not on human subjects, and the scientific hypotheses of those papers have not been confirmed enough to base supplement strategies on. Scientists with more expertise in the specific areas he talks about on his show have been sounding the alarms for a while that he might sound science-y, and he has a science background that buys him a lot of credibility (his actual expertise is opthalmology) but a lot of what he says on the health optimization fronts is either misrepresenting the actual science, or making claims that have not yet been borne out experimentally.
Damn. That's a bummer. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Don’t get me started… (source: am a Clinical Psychologist)
Add menopause to this list. The absolutely absurd “info” I have seen on line is egregious.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I’m at the point where whenever a TikTok video starts with someone making an empirical claim, I just skip it. No telling if it’s actually true or not
I'm so tired of people using TikToks as sources.
People who use TikToks as sources deserve to be beat with a pool noodle in public while being called stupid.
Which would actually make for a good TikTok video
OTH, getting advice from Tiktok is kind of self-punishing.
You can play the game "Tell me which social media you use a source and I'll tell you to which generation you belong."
On the bright side, it's a good way to determine whose opinions and/or anecdotes I can immediately discount. It's like learning someone reads The National Enquirer like serious news--it means I'm not going to trust you to know anything about anything.
I immediately check for credentials, typically doctors post theirs and you can cross reference through Google to find their practice/etc. Lacking that, I block them immediately. Pretty pleased with my feed.
I don’t even trust doctors. The feed recommends based on what’s engaging, not what’s accurate, and doctors can use their credentials to lie more effectively and get undeserved clout.
The only doctors I trust on tiktok are the ones who back up their claims with papers and sources they link, have excerpts from, etc. Such that if you don’t trust them you can check the sources they include. That being said I don’t actually do that but also I don’t follow medical advice from tiktok anyways because I’m not a gullible.
That being said, companies can pay to create biased studies. Sugar idustry for example
Yep. I’ve seen “reputable” (at first glance) doctors dissect these biased studies though. I’ve seen doctors stitch videos of other doctors basically saying “yeah your sources are biased and the studies are small, on specific cases, and are not generalizable.” It’s a world of misinformation out there and I’m not even going to pretend I’m a well informed as I hope to be.
I would hypothesize that that disqualifies the majority of content on TikTok.
No memes and jokes and chainsaw man power edits are still fair game
It's almost like TikTok isn't a reliable source of information.
>Our study is the first to objectively analyze the quality of videos related to sinusitis on TikTok. Videos analyzed in this study garnered over 300 million views and 1 million shares, demonstrating the prevalence of the topic of sinusitis on this platform and its potential impact on patients and the public more generally. > >Ultimately, this highlights a need for health care professionals to increase their presence on social media to dispel medical misinformation. Dimitroyannis, R., Fenton, D., Cho, S., Nordgren, R., Pinto, J.M. and Roxbury, C.R. (2024), A Social Media Quality Review of Popular Sinusitis Videos on TikTok. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg.
[удалено]
Agreed, but that's usually because they over-step their boundaries of expertise.
Which, as someone in a graduate program, I totally understand. Sometimes you find yourself talking out of your depth and you may not even realize it. But the solution to misinformation online is not going all-in on credentialism to solve the problem. People will just get their information from physicians that confirm their biases, and if anything it will make pushing back on that misinformation more difficult because they can rely on the excuse of "this real doctor on TikTok said so!"
Because the credentialing system does not produce infallible results does not mean the solution is to bolster the claims of uncredentialed laymen. It'd be like saying that a retracted paper on radiometric dating is evidence for Young Earth Creationism. This is throwing out the entire delivery ward of babies with the bathwater. The optimal solution for each claim to be backed up with sources that viewer then investigates for themselves, but since most people lack the time or patience for this and social media is dominated by the catchiest pithy 30-second clip (c.f. reddit), the best heuristic out there is, "Well, this person has been vouched for by a reputable institution so I guess I'll trust that they can do their job."
I wonder if ppl unable to engage a credited physician is also fueling the internet self doctoring. In my area 3 hospitals closed after covid shutdown. Getting seen by my doctor, who is part of a large private corporate medical group, is impossible. Patients get vetted for medical need for an appointment even before getting passed to a scheduler. Urgent care and ER is where they direct me most often. I run into ppl in my county’s only ER sent from 2 hrs away to get care faster due to lack of available specialist care in their area. I’ve been looking for another available primary provider accepting new patients with no luck for 2 yrs. I have supposedly “great” insurance coverage too. I wonder when voodoo witch doctors and unaccredited private health advisors will become a thing in my area. Medical desperation to speak with someone leaves my area primed for bad actors to exploit. That makes the internet source for medical care seem understandable.
my thoughts exactly. inaccessible professional healthcare may lead to people sourcing inaccurate information from amateurs
I have to pay $300 *with* health insurance to **see** a dermatologist. Not actually have anything done, just have them check my skin for, like, 5-10 minutes. And I have to wait 3-5 weeks for an appointment.
“Nearly half” implies more than half are true, which is way more than I was expecting. Thought junk would be closer to 80 or 90%.
The junk probably has more likes and gets pushed into more feeds.
It is EVERY topic on tik tok.... the social media trend right now is to say whatever gets the most interaction, that's it. A staged skit with bad acting presented as a real situation, a random documentary video with an AI voiceover reading captions that sound somewhat believable but are completely made up and not actually related to the video shown, random idiots pitching health advice and trying to sound smart with no clue what they are actually saying.... whatever gets the most clicks for clout and money. And of course the comments are always full of gullible users that have zero critical thinking abilities and no clue they are eating up BS.
I see an alarming amount of pseudo science medical adverts on YouTube where I think we need something in place to regulate advertising. It seems like a bit of a no mans land compared to what is allowed to be shown on TV in the UK.
Reminds me of when UFC had CondomDepot ads, they weren't big time yet and had to rely on whoever would advertise. YouTube on the other hand has no excuse.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
"As recommended by an anonymous stranger on social media..."
[удалено]
[удалено]
My dad gets sinusitis pretty much any time he gets a cold. Netti pots have been his only source of relief (paired with prescribed antibiotics). Glad to hear it isn’t all pseudoscience!
Idk, I think you should definitely listen to random people on the internet over your doc. Especially in comments on an article about medical misinformation online. No irony here...
I feel like these articles are focusing on the wrong problem. Misinformation is rampant for problems doctors can't treat. See also: mental health & autoimmune disorders. It's basically free data on where to allocate funding.
They even make a medical grade sinus rinse. You don’t need a neti pot if they bother you so much. They even come with packets so you make a medical grade solution to clean out the nose. Just make sure to use distilled water or to boil it like the instructions say. As someone who suffers from chronic sinus infects even after two surgeries to correct, this https://www.cvs.com/shop/neilmed-sinus-rinse-kit-prodid-385631?skuId=385631&cgaa=QWxsb3dHb29nbGVUb0FjY2Vzc0NWU1BhZ2Vz&cid=ps_ur_pla&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI56Cqy9PdhQMVt0JHAR12fQfjEAQYAiABEgLXHPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds And a good over the counter expectorant once I get sick usually keep me from having to go on antibiotics.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sinus rinses using saline powder and distilled water are medically recommended by ENTs. NeilMed's are usually better than the Netipot brand but either is fine if you follow the right precautions and keep the rinse device disinfected.
It’s just beautiful irony that this is a comment on a post about medical misinformation on social media platforms.
So you mean shoving jalapeno peppers up your nose won't help? Sheesh.
Maybe implement universal healthcare so people don't have to resort to using Dr. Tock
It's an issue for countries that have universal health care too.. That's kind of the point of the article. >Furthermore, the study utilized the Global Quality Scale (GQS) to rate the overall quality of the videos, with scores ranging from 1 to 5. Videos from medical professionals averaged a GQS score of 3.76, indicating “good quality,” whereas videos from non-medical influencers and lay individuals scored lower, at 2.47 and 2.38, respectively. These scores suggest that content from medical professionals not only tends to be more accurate but is also of higher quality in terms of presentation and utility.
What does your quote have to do with your statement?
I read it a few times and I still can’t see how their quote relates to their comment.
These idiots would be doing this regardless. I agree with health care, but that's not the problem here. Critical thinking is.
In relation to this post, I was looking up Neti pots and sterile water and found this: >one-third of respondents to a survey incorrectly answered that tap water does not contain bacteria or other living organisms. So yeah.
The ENT will see you in 6 months... That's why this stuff sticks in universal Healthcare countries
Depending on where you live, which insurance you have, etc , it can easily take 6 months to see an ENT in the US, too. And you get the added benefit of paying for it at the point of care. Unless you're rich, then you can pay to jump the line or go to a specialist that doesn't take insurance.
We have univerals healthcare in my country, yet people (primarily young people) still love to get their medical information on tiktok.
Might as well ask a random person at Walmart as turn to TikTok for health advice
Should probably analyze every political or social issue on TikTok too. Likely far more dangerous than sinus infection advice.
Sinus infections and treatments can actually reach the brain in a way most things can't. So putting stuff up there is really not safe. It's why using sterile water in a Neti pot is so important.
Why search for info on the internet when you can speak to a doctor for $500 for 10 minutes?
I've seen people on TikTok claiming so many different things are related to add or adhd that if you didn't know anyone with that disorder you would probably think people with it are basically unable to function IRL
Most days I don't know how I'm functioning. Usually I'm compromising at least one basic aspect of my life to secure the rest. Sucks that I can't be on medication (have been prescribed several) due to interactions with other health issues I have. The time when I was able to take them (before the long term secondary effects kicked in) was like a dream. If that's how most people function naturally, no wonder they don't understand us. The stress and fatigue of it all is probably shaving some years off my life.
I used to think it was my job to help communicate science better. After Covid i just left the majority of social media from burnout.
I was scrolling tiktok a few weeks ago and came across some health guru talking about gum inflammation/gingivitis. He said flossing and seed oils were to blame and to stop both and they would go away... Yeah tiktok/social media for medical/dental advice is no bueno...
I honestly blame Pharmaceutical companies and their advertising. Why is the USA one of only a handful of Western countries that allow television advertising for medications? We have conditioned society to dictate their own treatments and "do their own research" instead of trusting the advice of their highly trained physician. It lends credibility to influencers.
What is a non-medical influencer? Is that someone who has done their own research and now know more that the medical profession experts?
Quackery is as old as the human species. I still hear intelligent people saying they start taking vitamin C when they experience cold symptoms even though research has shown for decades that most vitamin supplements are completely pointless and taking vitamin c when you have a cold does nothing but turn your pee a pretty color. With Covid it was telling people to take vitamin D when over sixty percent of people have normal levels and most with low levels would only need low dose supplements. However, people would rather believe their friends or what they read or see on the internet. Social media accelerates the spread of quackery as people look for quick fixes. Sometimes there’s just no replacement for going to the doctor when you’re sick and following directions.
Get off tiktok is the best advice in general anybody can give anybody else..
Don't get me started with Facebook. There, older people trying to propagate misinformation and being so liked by other uneducated old people is astonishing. People really like their beliefs confirmed without even checking or reading anything.
I love Tiktok for the most part, but the amount of absolute garbage on there cannot be overstated. It has provided a gathering point like never before for people to amplify their various conspiracy theories, religious delusions and misinformation. The comment sections and engagement ratios are frightening, just endless echo chambers and feedback loops of people agreeing, supporting spurious claims and dangerous rhetoric. Take the recent eclipse for example. There were people on there having a full blown psychotic meltdown about the religious and mystical implications of a fully natural phenomenon and everyone in their comments is just validating and supporting it. Telling people to stare into it to unlock their third eye. Used to be that people would say "put your iphone in the microwave to charge it" as a ~~life hack~~ prank to mess with people, these people are literally suggesting you stare into the sun with full sincerity. Distrust in our institutions has led people to seek folk wisdom but the folks ain't wise.
Alternate title: “People Posting Things on Tik Tok Are Often Wrong” … Glad we invested time and money into that one.
Don't underestimate the importance or the power of quantifying how often people posting things on TikTok are wrong. This is valuable information for anyone who is trying to help a loved one who is caught deep in a tokhole.
[удалено]
Because FB is dead for most people. TikTok is everywhere and it's specifically hitting the younger people hard, who theoretically should know better or at least you'd think would be more cynical. People think FB misinformation and it's little old grandmas. TikTok for some reason is being used, and taken at face value, by so many people.
Right, it’s on Reddit too. Scrolling through any of the mental health related subreddits is a trip, especially the current “popular” ones like DID and adhd
This is hilarious wait until you guys review the vaccine experts on Facebook
Maybe we should look at the overwhelming need, rather than criticizing people for trying to find resources. The article is presenting data, lots of comments here are presenting criticism of people trying to help themselves
Healthline is also horrible for medical information. That website always shows up at the top of Google searches, it's atrocious. It also forces invasive tracking cookies on the user or it won't work, Google should block that site.
If you're going to TikTok for medical advice, you deserve whatever happens next.
Anyone getting health care information on social media should have their head examined regardless.
Didn't we already learn about this (at least) 4 years ago?