REPRESENTATION OF GASTROINTESTINAL DISORDERS ON A SHORT-VIDEO SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

Background/Aims:
Short video formats, especially among young adults, have become one of the most commonly utilized methods for the dissemination of medical information on social media. The data on GI-related content on short video platforms is limited. We analyzed GI-related content on TikTok focusing on the creators' background, patterns of content utilization, and overall content quality and understandability using validated metrics to quantify the degree of misinformation.

Methods:
12 hashtags related to common GI conditions on TikTok and the 20 “most engaging” posts associated with each hashtag were selected for review. The “most engaging” status was determined by the application’s internal algorithm based on the number of likes, comments, views, and shares, and such posts are featured on the platform’s “top” page. Data extracted for each post included the number of likes, comments, and shares, its purpose, and the creator’s background. 6 GI-boarded physicians evaluated the videos with two validated instruments: DISCERN quality criteria for consumer health information and the PEMAT-AV survey for understandability and actionability; the videos were also scored for the presence of misinformation with a five-point Likert scale.

Results

253 videos were reviewed with 18.6 billion likes, 191 thousand comments, 935 thousand saves, and 927 thousand shares. IBS hashtag had the greatest number of views (2.2 billion), while videos on hemorrhoids had the most likes (4.3 million), comments (59 thousand), and shares (288 thousand). Most videos 177/253 (70%) were created by non-healthcare workers, 28/253 (11.1%) were posted by physicians. Among physician-created videos, 21/28 (75%) were created for educational, and the rest for personal reasons (Table 1).

186/253 videos were analyzed using the validated instruments described above, the remaining videos were not available on the platform at the time of review. The median video quality was 2/5 on DISCERN Likert scale with 23/75 DISCERN score. 114/186 videos (61.3%) were rated “very poor”; 58/186 (31.2%) “poor”, 13/186 (7%) “fair”, and only 1 video (0.5%) was rated “excellent” on DISCERN grading system. The median video source quality was 1/5 with 153/186 videos (82.2%) rated as a 1/5 on the clarity and quality of sources used to compile the content. The median PEMAT scores were 7/12 (73.9%) for understandability and 1/3 (33.3%) for actionability; 82.1% of videos used everyday language (Table 2).

Conclusions:
Our study highlights significant public interest in common gastrointestinal disorders. Nonetheless, most posts lacked substantive information and did not have verifiable sources of information. Although easily comprehensible, most videos did not encourage any specific health behavior. There is an urgent need for clinicians to develop accurate educational content which could improve patient outreach.