While social media sites initially began as a way to keep in touch with our friends, they have grown so that any post has the potential to reach millions of people – this means that viral trends such as health and nutrition hacks on TikTok can spread like wildfire.
However, new research suggests that you should think twice before trying one of these potentially questionable health trends on the likes of TikTok or Instagram as alarmingly few of them are backed by science.
New survey reveals how willing people are to try viral hacks
Nutrition and food tracking app, MyFitnessPal, has conducted a survey asking 2,000 Millennials and Gen Z from the US, Canada, the UK and Australia about their willingness to try viral health and nutrition hacks they come across online.
The survey found that 87% of respondents have used TikTok to search for nutrition or health advice and that 57% are influenced by or frequently adopt trends they discover on the social media platform.
Dietary hacks that respondents came across included detoxing, foods that burn stomach fat, and liquid cleanses, many of which have little to no scientific backing.
Despite the potential health risks linked with certain popular trends, 30% of respondents still tried them anyway while 31% said they had experienced an adverse effect from one of these ‘fad diet’ trends.
“The survey findings highlight the fact that people need to better understand what’s in the food they’re eating, dig more into the science behind social trends, and find trusted sources to guide them,” says Katie Keil, MyFitnessPal’s Chief Marketing Officer. “There are a lot of great licensed registered dietitians out there, along with medical professionals and credible brands, that are sharing evidence-based content on social media. We encourage people to find and follow those trusted sources.”
Further study finds that tiny percentage of TikTok hacks are accurate
To further explore the findings of their survey, MyFitnessPal partnered with Dublin City University for a research and experimental study that investigated diet and nutrition content on TikTok.
The joint study analyzed over 67,000 videos using artificial intelligence to compare them against public health and nutrition guidelines. Alarmingly, the preliminary findings suggest that only 2.1% of the analyzed nutrition content proved to be accurate when compared to these guidelines.
The remaining content was either inaccurate, partially accurate, or classified as uncertain due to a lack of support by scientific evidence according to the study.
“People are relying on certain social media signals – such as follower count or virality of a video – to guide food choices,” adds Keil. “But those may not be good indicators of high-quality nutritional health content.”
“With more people turning to social media for health and wellness advice, it’s critical for us as a community to enhance our digital health literacy,” says Theo Lynn PhD, Dublin City University Business School Professor of Digital Business. “This involves being aware of the experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness of the source. It’s important to understand that these viral TikTok trends often lack the rigor of controlled experiments and evidence-based scientific consensus, and, therefore, should not be trusted as a reliable source of information.”
While the research highlighted the accuracy – or lack thereof – of certain TikTok trends, one finding of the study is that Gen Z does trust content shared by qualified Registered Dietitians over nutrition information shared by unqualified influencers.
To help social media users further their understanding of online health and nutrition hacks, MyFitnessPal and Dublin City University have developed a resource that people can use as a checklist to spot potentially inaccurate information.
