Social media may promote misinformation on alopecia

Alopecia-related content on Instagram and TikTok is primarily promotional in nature with a lack of substantiated medical evidence, according to a study.

“Hair loss, or alopecia, affects over 50% of men and 40% of women in their lifetime,” Melissa R. Laughter, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. “This topic currently has over 280,000 related posts on Instagram alone and may be vulnerable to the spread of misinformation by non-dermatologists.”

Laughter and colleagues identified the top 10 social media hashtags related to hair loss and collected the nine most popular posts for each hashtag on Instagram and the top 10 videos for each hashtag on TikTok. The author of each post was categorized as a company, a social media influencer, or a medical professional or medical group.

Of the 90 Instagram posts, nonmedical professional influencers created 66% of the posts, with hair care companies and wig companies creating 29%. Only 4% of the posts were from medical providers or medical practices, and none were created by board-certified dermatologists.

The hashtag #hair contained approximately 215 million posts, while the hashtag #hairlosstreatment generated approximately 231,000 posts. Fifty percent of the top liked posts for each hashtag were created by an influencer, 40% by a hair care business and 10% by a professional wig manufacturing company.

Of the 100 TikTok posts, influencers created 38% of the posts, patients created 38%, hair and wig companies created 14%, and medical professionals created 10%. Although medical professionals had a higher presence on TikTok compared with Instagram, none of the posts were by board-certified dermatologists.

Within TikTok, 36% of posts were promotional in nature, followed by educational at 34% and inspirational at 30%.

“The overwhelming majority of popular hair loss-related content on Instagram and TikTok is made by individuals with no medical or dermatologic training,” Laughter and colleagues wrote. “Unfortunately, this can lead to the spread of misinformation and promotion of products and services that not only serve little efficacy but may also be detrimental to disease treatment. Social media represents a great opportunity for dermatologists to counteract these negative effects and use these platforms to promote quality, evidence-based information to better guide patients.”