O3223: Digital Misinformation and Public Health: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Sexual Health Content on TikTok

Background: TikTok, a widely used social media platform among adolescents, has become a prominent source of health-related information. In 2024, 4 in 10 young adults reported regularly using TikTok as a primary source of information. However, the content shared on the platform is largely unregulated and often inaccurate. Increased exposure to such content may contribute to risky behaviors, particularly in relation to sexual health. This cross-sectional study aims to assess the accuracy of sexual health information on TikTok.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on Mar 25, 2025. A new TikTok account was created, representing a 15-year-old user. Two reviewers independently examined the top ten videos in English under 3 minutes for ten keywords related to sexual and reproductive health. The (N = 100) videos were classified by both reviewers as accurate, inaccurate, or neutral. Additionally, the reviewers assessed whether the content was posted by a medical professional or promoted unsafe behavior. All evaluations were conducted independently by each reviewer to ensure unbiased results. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa test and other analyses were completed with Chi2 tests in Stata.

Results: Inter-rater reliability was 98% for judgement of accuracy. Of the videos analyzed, 58% were created by healthcare professionals. Videos created by healthcare professionals were more likely to be accurate than videos created by non-healthcare professionals (p < 0.001). Specifically, 3.4% of videos created by healthcare professionals with information were inaccurate, while 21.4% of videos created by non-healthcare professionals were inaccurate. Search terms related to abortion (e.g., how to get an abortion, induced miscarriage, pill abortion) yielded more inaccurate videos (p = 0.001), with 26.7% of abortion-related videos containing inaccurate information compared to 4.3% of other videos. Furthermore, the same search terms were the only terms associated with videos promoting unsafe practices (p = 0.007).

Conclusion: TikTok can be a valuable tool to disseminate reproductive health information among adolescents, and healthcare professionals are often the most accurate sources of information on the platform. Additionally, topics related to abortion had much higher rates of inaccurate information, so healthcare professionals should be aware of potential misinformation in this area. Furthermore, stricter oversight on inaccurate videos could be beneficial, especially for adolescent users.