Updated 21st January 2026
Dangers of health misinformation part 1: Influencers
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This is the first in a four-part series on health misinformation and the real-world harm it causes. This article focuses on social media influencers.
I'm sure we don’t need to tell you that misinformation and disinformation are rife on the internet. And worryingly, health and nutrition content are at the crest of this fake news tsunami.
Social media is awash with influencers vying for our attention so they can profit by selling their courses and hawking their magic solutions and silver bullets.
Often, these grifts are relatively harmless. Yes, they can give people false hope, leave them confused, or waste their time and money, but in most cases, that’s the end of it. However, in some cases, they cause real harm.
In this article, we look at the real-world consequences of wellness disinformation, particularly from social media influencers.
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Misinformation vs. disinformation
First, let’s clear up some terminology:
Misinformation: Misleading or incorrect information; usually shared due to a lack of knowledge or in error.
Disinformation: Misleading or incorrect information shared to purposefully mislead for malicious reasons or for profit alone.
In the real world, it’s not always possible to distinguish between these two terms, as we rarely know the spreader’s intention: Are they just uninformed, or are they purposefully spreading poor information to fool you?
Malinformation: Coined in 2017, this refers to information that is correct but intended to mislead or manipulate.
One example of malinformation is doxxing, which is when a bad actor leaks an individual’s personal details with the express intention of doing them harm. So, the information they share is factual, but the intent is malicious.
Can you trust a social media health influencer?
Not all social media influencers are equal. Some are medically trained, active research scientists, or clinicians, and provide solid health and nutrition advice. The vast majority, however, do not.
Social media platforms reward confident, shiny-looking people over factual information. We all know this, but it’s easy to forget.
It’s always worth reminding ourselves that a large following does not mean that an influencer is sharing reliable information.
Rather, their success is due to a combination of charisma, charm, marketing spend, algorithms, persistence, good looks, and, of course, controversy.
What is rage bait?
Social media algorithms bump content that people interact with. But people interact with things for many reasons.
So, a Facebook post with 1,000 comments below it will be pushed into many users’ feeds, even if every single comment is negative.
This is why “rage bait” is such a huge problem. Rage baiting is when a user posts something they know will annoy people, just so other users will engage in anger, thereby increasing their reach. Engagement is engagement after all.
If the main point of social media were to present accurate information to people, this would be a terrible system. But of course, that's not the point. The point is profit for the platform and the influencers, making it a very messy system.
It won’t have slipped your notice that many, many social media influencers sell pills and potions. When you consider that the majority of these people are not medically trained, that should ring alarm bells.
But how big is this problem? An analysis in BMJ tries to answer this question. And they conclude that it’s big.
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The size of the problem
The authors of the BMJ analysis note that over 70% of young US adults follow influencers, and more than 40% have purchased products based on their recommendations.
They also mention an Austrian study showing that 31% of 15–25-year-olds have purchased dietary supplements inspired by health-related influencers.
A 2024 survey of Millennials and Gen Z TikTok users found that over half had been influenced by nutrition trends on the platform. And 67% tried these trends more than once each week.
Worryingly, just 2.1% of the nutrition content the researchers checked was based on public health guidelines.
In line with this, a survey on 2,000 Americans by CharityRx found that “Nearly 1 in 5 Americans trust health influencers more than medical professionals in their community.”
They also found that half of Americans have bought a health product after seeing an ad for it on social media.
Yet another study investigated more than 100 dietary supplements promoted by German influencers. The authors concluded that about two-thirds of the recommended doses exceeded national safety recommendations.
What's worse, 7% went above the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) upper safe limits.
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Because we all know that vitamins are essential for good health, it’s easy to assume that more is always better, and that’s simply not true. For instance, fat-soluble vitamins, like vitamin A, can cause real harm if taken in large doses.
Also, because supplements aren’t regulated in the same way that drugs are, you can never be entirely sure what ingredients they’ll contain, and in what quantities.
Even if these influencers have your best interests at heart (which, in most cases, is way too charitable), the majority are not medically trained. Their primary drive is money.
That means they will shill supplements, interventions, and medicines, regardless of their efficacy or relevance to you.
It’s not about your health, even when they promise that it is.
Real-world examples of harm
Giving out poor health advice is clearly unethical, but does it ever really cause harm? Sadly, yes. Below are some examples of when influencers and the people they influence have been harmed.
We've included harm to influencers themselves, as they are often victims of the algorithms, too. In particular, they can be affected by “audience capture.” This is when they change their views or behaviors to please their audience.
This creates a feedback loop that can lead them to adopt ever more extreme content to maintain engagement.
For instance, if an influencer's video of them eating a live slug goes viral, in their next video, they might chase that high by eating five in one go. If that video performs well, they might shift to promoting the health benefits of slug-eating and produce increasingly extreme content.
Trigger warning: The examples below include death and injury, including of children. Please scroll down to the next section if you prefer to skip these topics.
Zhanna Samsonova was a "raw vegan" influencer who died from a cholera-like infection, exacerbated by a decade of only eating raw fruit and vegetables.
COVID-19: A number of influencers who denied the existence of COVID-19 succumbed to the disease, including Dmitriy Stuzhuk and Cirsten Weldon. It is highly likely that at least some of the thousands of people they influenced also died.
Paloma Shemirani, a 23-year-old, died after refusing chemotherapy for a treatable cancer. She was influenced by online anti-medicine conspiracy theories and her mother, who is a high-profile UK-based conspiracy theorist.
Linda Stasi was a fitness influencer who died from a heart attack caused by a severe electrolyte imbalance. This came after a prolonged water fast.
The Free Birth Society (FBS) promotes giving birth at home with no medical support. Promoted by influencers on Instagram and podcasts, the movement has become popular despite the obvious dangers. According to a Guardian report, FBS guidance has been associated with tens of late-term stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
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What are we supposed to do about all of this?
Misinformation is nothing new. It’s probably as old as humanity itself. In the modern world, however, social media has given it a jetpack.
Today, you can post nonsense and have it travel globally within seconds. An old adage goes something like this: “Lies can travel halfway around the world before truth has got its pants on.” Today, this is truer than ever.
False information that’s surprising or branded as “cutting edge” or “one trick your doctor won’t tell you” is appealing to us. It’s human nature, and it’s something we need to live with as a species.
Being aware of this bias is a good start. We can’t change the way our brains work, but we can second-guess ourselves when something looks too good to be true.
So, the next time you find yourself being convinced about what a social media influencer is saying, take a step back.
At ZOE, we’ve written a series of guides to help you identify poor information. We hope these will help:
In part two of our series on misinformation, we’ll look at influencers who are medically trained and should know better.
