The broad reach and inaccuracy of men’s health information on social media: analysis of TikTok and Instagram

Abstract Objectives: To quantify the volume and characterize the accuracy of men’s health-related content on TikTok and Instagram Methods: We conducted a search on both TikTok and Instagram for the terms: testosterone, erectile dysfunction, male infertility, semen retention, Peyronie’s disease, and vasectomy. The top 10 hashtags for each term were identified and used to estimate the total number of impressions for each term on each platform. We evaluated the top 40 posts for each topic on each platform and characterized the post by creator type, content type, and accuracy. Content accuracy was scored on a scale from one to five, with one being completely inaccurate information and five being completely accurate.Results: Overall, TikTok had more than 2.3 billion impressions and Instagran had more than 3 million posts across the men’s health topics. Semen retention had the most impressions on TikTok (1.2 billion) and posts on Instagram (1 million). Physicians created only a small portion of content comprising only 10.3% and 12.9% of total TikTok and Instagram posts, respectfully. Across all men’s health topics, the accuracy of content was poor with a score of 2.6 +/- 1.7 but physician posts were significantly more accurate than non-physician posts (4.2 vs 2.3, p < 0.001 respectfully).Conclusions: Men’s health content is popular on TikTok and Instagram but has a low level of overall accuracy. Given the higher accuracy of physician-created content, we recommend that physicians actively engage, on both individual and organizational levels, in social media to address misinformation