Despite misgivings, folks will still take health advice from social media.
Back in the Dark Ages when your Back Page scrawler was a young man, he studied the discipline of economics.
While finding the subject interesting and challenging, one of the underpinning tenets of the dismal science at that time was that humans (homo economicus) were perfectly rational; that is, folks always made choices that gave them the greatest happiness or benefit for the lowest cost.
Even though we had quite limited life experience at the time, it struck us then that this proposition was ludicrously optimistic at best, and most certainly not borne out by any lived reality.
Thankfully, modern economic theory has moved on from such a naïve assumption – which is just as well because the evidence that many of our fellow travellers have only a passing acquaintance with rational thinking continues to mount alarmingly.
Take a recent survey of more than 7000 US adults who use social media to engage with health information, as an example.
As long suspected, the survey, conducted by the Yale School of Medicine, finds that not only has social media become a major venue for health information, more than one in five people were making decisions based on these sources despite admitting to not fully trusting the veracity of the information being presented.
Publishing last month in JAMA, the Yale researchers said: “More than 20% of people made health decisions based on social media, despite almost 80% reporting distrust, suggesting exposure may influence behaviour, even when reliability is questioned.”
The researchers noted also that it was not just people struggling to manage chronic diseases who were using social media to help guide their health decisions.
The authors suggested this apparent disconnect between distrust and decision-making reflected the design features of social media platforms, which were “optimised for engagement over accuracy”.
“Unlike traditional sources, social media operates through algorithmically curated, engagement-driven environments increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence-generated content often lacking editorial oversight,” the study authors said.
“Social media is a key component of the health information environment for US adults with and without chronic conditions, highlighting the need for approaches to enhance the accuracy of health content and counter artificial intelligence-amplified misinformation,” they optimistically added.
Given the current track record we have of social media giants taking meaningful steps to mitigate the clear and present harms their technologies perpetrate, we are not holding our breath.
Sending story tips to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au is a perfectly rational thing to do.
