Social media has connected communities, empowered movements and given a platform and a voice to many underrepresented groups. There are, however, two sides to the social media coin, and on this World Contraception Day, it is worth taking a moment to talk about the elephant in the room – online misinformation and disinformation about contraception.
Decades of wellbeing and welfare progress around contraception and family planning are being undermined by misinformation and disinformation. And the most significant source of this misinformation is social media.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) explains that misinformation in public health is false information that is spread due to ignorance, error or mistake, without the intent to deceive an audience. Disinformation is when there is a deliberate intention to deceive and cause harm.
Feedback from a recent social media information session run specifically for healthcare practitioners by Organon Australia, and attended by nine health care professionals, revealed that social media was, for a long time, not taken very seriously. At worst it was considered an irritation, as patients bombarded their GPs, pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners with questions about the advice they’d received from friends on Facebook. Among practitioners, the general rule was just to steer clear of social media. GPs advised their patients not to listen to what people said on social media, and health care workers avoided setting up personal or professional accounts on social channels. The notion of getting on to social media and actually addressing misinformation or poor advice, was entirely rejected as “feeding the trolls”.
But there has been a shift in social media from content to commentary, and this means that the rules have changed. As more and more people have adopted social media applications, it has grown as a source of primary news information. In 2023, 46 per cent of 18–24-year-olds nominated social media as their main source of news, up from 28 per cent the year before. And while this has been happening, the peddlers of health care misinformation have been enabled to grow and flourish on social channels. As such, the healthcare sector must rethink how best to engage with it as a primary news and educational source.
Social media algorithms work to reinforce messages that have high engagement, or ideas that are similar to posts that users engage with or share. And research has estimated that posts that include misinformation are 70 per cent more likely to be shared than posts that include accurate information. So the previous tactic of avoiding engaging has actually produced the plague of dangerous misinformation on social channels that practitioners, policy makers and the broader public all now face.
The statistics are both compelling and depressing. As an example, one 2022 study of the top 100 videos by likes tagged to a single form of contraception, found that of the 53 videos with scientific claims, 24 per cent of TikTok videos contained information that was either moderately or highly inaccurate. Nearly 40 per cent of these videos portrayed contraceptives in a negative light.
And misinformation is part of a broader global risk to social harmony according to the World Economic Forum. The spread of false information could impact shared decision-making around contraception between health professionals and young women, as they turn to social media for information about contraception.
Organon is a healthcare company that is committed to advocating and improving the lives of women. Generally, the heath care sector is focused on providing balanced and accurate information based on established scientific rigor. We can’t carry out this vital task if we have lost trust in the conversations that are taking place online.
The rate of unplanned pregnancies is high in Australia. The Unintended Pregnancy Report which Organon Australia commissioned and published in 2022 calculated that 40 per cent of pregnancies in 2020 were unintended, and that health outcomes are worse for both mother and baby when the pregnancy is unplanned.
So it’s time we all stood together and face the inconvenient truth that misinformation about contraception is a risk – to our patients, and to society at large. There are ways to address it; we can debunk, correct the record and advocate for evidence on social channels.
We have an opportunity and responsibility to do what we can to correct the record. Let’s use this World Contraception Day to combat misinformation and promote accurate, evidence-based information about contraception.
By doing so, that together the healthcare community can empower individuals to make informed choices, leading to healthier families and stronger communities.
Image: Julie Mullan.