Search for“birth control” on TikTok or Instagram and a cascade of misleading videos vilifying hormonal contraception appear: Young women blaming their weight gain on the pill. Right-wing commentators claiming that some birth control can lead to infertility. Testimonials complaining of depression and anxiety.
Instead, many social media influencers recommend “natural” alternatives, such as timing sex to menstrual cycles — a less effective birth-control method that doctors warn could result in unwanted pregnancies in a country where abortion is now banned or restricted in nearly half the states.
Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception — which includes birth-control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) —is safe and effective, they worry the profession’s long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects has left many patients seeking information from unqualified online communities.
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The sad part is that we don’t have parents, teachers, professors, and others educating the young about the true nature of social media platforms. On Tik Toc, Facebook, and Instagram, you are the product. What is brought and sold is your attention. As a consequence, the business model is to present the most salacious, controversial, and wild stories to keep you engaged. Truth is not part of the equation. None of these are news platforms and to mistake them as such leads to our current predicament. They are for entertainment value only – if that. The manifestation of these platforms represents the rise of the peer group as the authority figure, vs. those who may actually have solid information. When you are a purveyor of solid information in these spaces its difficult to compete with the salacious. What’s worse is that these platforms can demonetize you for information that may be true but which they don’t like. And now Congress wants to give the President that power. We are heading down a sorry road indeed.
Excellent and accurate points, Albus.