Health and wellness advice is available in abundance on social media — from trendy to informative to straight-up disinformation — and you’re far from alone in seeing it.A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults — and around half of those under 50 — get health information from social media or podcasts.Researchers also looked at the social media profiles of 6,828 health and wellness influencers with at least 100,000 followers. Only about 4 in 10 list a background as a health professional. About one-third called themselves coaches, about 3 in 10 described themselves as entrepreneurs and about 1 in 10 cited their own life experience, like being a parent.Despite the wide range of expertise, about half of people who get health and wellness information from influencers said the influencers help them better understand their own health, while about one-third said it hasn’t made much difference. About 1 in 10 said it made them more confused.Experts say a bit of skepticism is key to interacting with posts about fitness, mental health and personal health. Here are their tips on how to be a smarter consumer.
How to vet a health influencer’s credentials Experts said the biggest green flag is when an influencer’s credentials are easy to find on their profile. Beware the fill-in-the-blank “coach” who can’t prove their training.Courtney Babilya, a certified medical exercise specialist and personal trainer who has more than 430,000 followers on Instagram, has seen this with maternity content: “Someone has a baby and suddenly they’re a pregnancy coach.”“We have to be careful with people who have an experience in one thing and suddenly become a ‘coach’ on that,” she said.
