I follow a couple doctors on YouTube who talk about health & wellness issues. My wife has her own set of influencers who discuss health, cellular biology and antiaging, among other things. A couple are doctors, another is a PhD geneticist at Harvard. There is no end to the amount of health information available on YouTube. I have often thought YouTube would be a good platform for social medicine group therapy, where patients receive education, instruction and even post questions live and receive individual treatment plans. Although my vision has not been realized, there are plenty of influencers whose primary content is health & wellness. The Wall Street Journal reports that researchers looked at more than 6,500 content creators who post about health & wellness on social media. The health influencers they analyzed had at least one account (YouTube, TikTok or Instagram) with more than 100,000 followers. That suggests untold millions of viewers follow health influencers.
Not everyone who follows health content is discerning with who they follow, and the advice is not always from experts. The following is from the Wall Street Journal:
A new study of health and wellness influencers found that nearly as many say they are coaches or entrepreneurs as say they are health professionals.
The new data, by the Pew Research Center, found that 41% of health and wellness influencers described themselves as some sort of healthcare professional in their profiles, while 31% said they were coaches and 28% said they were entrepreneurs. (Many put themselves in more than one category.) Another 16% reported no credentials in their bios. The healthcare professional category was a broad one: It included doctors, nurses, dietitians, social workers, chiropractors and massage therapists, among other jobs.
Concern about health misinformation on the Internet is not new. Going back 30 years the medical industry worried about patients coming in for physician visits with a handful of website printouts of dubious merit. Nowadays conspiracy theories about vaccines, Covid, Ivermectin abound. Social media has provided an avenue for charlatans to find an audience and for people susceptible to conspiracy theories to find a guru to follow. Sometimes the information is faddish and often wrong. More from WSJ:
Social media has amplified this problem. When researchers in Australia examined Instagram posts about nutrition from popular influencers, for example, they found that about 45% contained inaccurate information such as the need to avoid certain food groups or take specific supplements, according to a study published in 2024 in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. Posts from dietitians were more accurate, the study found.
While most people (about two-thirds) say they do not trust all the information, about 10% do. One quarter say they trust little or none of what they see. It should be common sense, but people interested in health content on social media should scrutinize the credentials of those they follow. TikTok has become something of a cesspool of bad health information, whereas YouTube has a certification program for health care professionals to let viewers scrutinize the credentials of the people they follow. Also watch out for sponsored content and affiliate links.
Watch out for financial conflicts of interest, too, says Nickel. In about 70% of the posts about the medical tests that Nickel and colleagues analyzed in a 2025 study, the influencers had some financial interest in the products. Most posts were promotional and didn’t mention potential downsides of the tests like additional unnecessary tests and treatments, Nickel said.
“If someone’s trying to sell you something, consume that information with a bit of skepticism,” Denniss said.
Social media has become the Wild West of medical advice. Do not believe everything you see. One doctor I follow often says, “discuss this with your doctor. I’m a doctor but I’m not your doctor.” Look for credentials, not just charisma and a dynamic speaking voice. Research more about the health influencer on websites like Wikipedia, even Microsoft Copilot and Google AI will alert you to controversies other people have expressed in discussion forums like Reddit.
Social medial platforms like YouTube have the potential to drastically boost productivity in the primary care sector, while improving quality of care and boosting access to care. We just need to convince state medical boards to allow it.
Read more at WSJ: Who Exactly Is That Wellness Influencer? Not Likely a Doctor or Nurse