Credit: Pexels/ Angel Moranchel

Your doctor is no longer the only person advising you about your health, and a new report explains why that’s so complicated.

From working with artificial intelligence and bot assistants to access health records, to using online appointment scheduling systems, navigating healthcare can be intimidating. Accessing reliable health information can be difficult, too, and about 70 percent of people rely on their doctors for medical information or advice.

However, approximately 40 percent of Americans also get health information from influencers on social media channels such as Instagram, Tik Tok, and You Tube and podcasts, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

Pew researchers found that 40 percent of health and wellness influencers say they have a background as a medical professional; and 65 percent of influencers are women.

The desire for lifestyle change

The report shows that 40 percent of people who consume health and wellness content do so because they want to make “health or lifestyle changes,” according to Pew’s report.

And the desire for lifestyle change is consistent among Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans who are more likely than white Americans to get health information from social media influencers.

However, healthcare providers still hold the top spot as an information source, said Eileen Yam, one of the report authors and director of science and society at Pew.

“Healthcare providers are still the top health information source. It used to be a much more gated community, but it is a different world now. And that fractured information ecosystem is striking,” Yam said.

For some groups, however, the variances in information provided by influencers versus healthcare providers are marked.

Compared to 16 percent of white Americans and 14 percent of Asian Americans, approximately 24 percent of Black Americans say the information they get from health influencers is “extremely very different” from the information they get from healthcare providers.

Renee Wiljon said she compares information from health influencers with what her doctors tell her.

“The algorithm plays a role”

“I don’t subscribe to everything my doctors say. I do my research, especially when it comes to alternatives to traditional medicine. And a lot of times the people I follow on You Tube provide more detail and depth about health issues and how to treat them or holistic approaches, and I appreciate that,” Wiljon said.

Wiljon, a Lorton, Va. resident, seeks out health information on social media, but for some social media users, health information finds them when they are not searching for it, according to the Pew report.

Galen Stocking, associate director of research at Pew and lead report author, said this has to do with how content is ranked or filtered social media users’ feeds.

“We found that two thirds of people are happening to just come across this information rather than seeking it out. They don’t go to Instagram to look for it, but it is what Instagram is serving them. So, we are seeing how the algorithm plays a role,” Stocking said.

The report also shows that Asian Americans, Hispanics, and Black Americans are more likely to get health information from influencers than white Americans: 48 percent; 47 percent; 44 percent, and 45 percent respectively.

Stocking said this is in part because “marginalized groups tend to adopt technology before white Americans.” For example, Black and Hispanic Americans lead white Americans in mobile phone and mobile app use. And access to technology such as broadband and telehealth can help reduce health disparities.

Despite consumers’ reliance on health influencers, their trust and consumption levels don’t match.

“These consumers are not wholesale blindly accepting everything they see. We found that 2/3 of them trust some of the information they get. This is something to keep an eye on moving forward. That is something that is front of mind for me,” Yam said.

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