We have to face the fact that social media is now the primary way that many people get their information. More than half of people in the US get their “news” from social media at least some of the time. But I don’t think asking people where they get “news” captures the full phenomenon. People who watch TikTok videos might not consider that consuming news.
By analogy, people probably don’t consider watching sitcoms or soap operas consuming news, but evidence consistently shows that such exposure to pop culture influences our beliefs and attitudes. So, like it or not, we have to consider the possibility that our culture, to a significant extent, belongs to social media now. This has far reaching implications for our society, but I want to consider just one – beliefs and attitudes toward medicine and health.
I have been promoting SBM on YouTube, Facebook, and more recently TikTok, and the environment is grim. There are pockets of sanity, and good science communicators doing their best, but I have noticed some disturbingly common beliefs. The level of cynicism and conspiracy-mongering is profound. Anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism, and anti-expertiseism (I think I just made that word up) is rampant. I try to whack several moles a week on TikTok, but I am just scratching the surface.
Focusing a bit further, one specific attitude I find extremely common is notion that everything is either a horrible toxin or a life-saver. While this attitude is part of the online zeitgeist, it is also deliberately cultivated by self-proclaimed health gurus and influencers. This predates social media, but is now far more prevalent.
Everyone with a cell phone, regardless of their background, education, and experience, can post on TikTok that some everyday food is a horrible toxin and you should just throw it away. Don’t eat peanut butter, or spinach, and don’t usetea bags or toilet paper. The list is endless. Often they are just promoting their own health-guru brand, so they have to have something shocking and scary to tell you. They may also be promoting their own alternative products. But often they are just falling victim to chemophobia – paying forward the same nonsense they are consuming.
It is so rampant that you will see in the comments users noticing how out-of-control it is. “So we can’t eat anything now” is a common observation. It would be interesting for someone with far more time than I currently have to systematically go through a list of common food items and ingredients and see how many of them are targeted by some TikToker who says it will kill you.
The underlying assumptions here, which can either be implicit or explicit, include the notion that the regulatory agencies are failing you. The FDA, USDA, and EPA, apparently, are unaware of all these stunning facts or are in the pocket of industry or simply don’t care. Doctors who are not themselves online gurus apparently also don’t know health science or are part of some sinister conspiracy. This is just taken as a given.
Since I can’t (in one lifetime) take on all this nonsense individual, I do try to spread some healthy attitudes to protect against TikTok health doomscrolling.
First, stop with the black-and-white false dichotomy thinking. Most foods are neither horrible toxins or superfoods – they are just food. Eat a varied diet with plenty of plant matter, and everything in moderation, and chances are you’ll be fine. Unless you have a specific medical condition that requires special attention, for most people that is a good first approximation of a healthful diet. Any more detail is unlikely to provide a statistically significant benefit, or be worth the effort or expense. In fact, avoid lots of different foods, going on special diets, is far more likely to be harmful than helpful.
Related to this is the foundational concept of toxicology – the dose makes the poison. Everything is a poison in a high enough dose, and most things are safe in a low enough dose. You can be sure that anything that is not safe in any dose is already banned or there are efforts to minimize human exposure.
Everything is a chemical. There are chemicals in every single thing you have ever consumed. Water is a chemical. Bananas are loaded with chemicals. The fact that something contains chemicals, in and of itself, is meaningless. What matters is – which chemicals and at what dose.
“Natural” is meaningless. That something occurs in nature does not mean it is harmless or helpful. Nature does not care about you. In fact, at a first approximation, nature is actively trying to kill you. Plants make toxins to keep you from eating them. Animals make toxins to kill you. That is why almost every plant you eat has been cultivated beyond recognition to be human-friendly. There is also nothing inherently unhealthy or risky about a chemical that is manufactured or synthetic. All that matters is the science and the evidence for safety at various doses.
Don’t just assume there is a ridiculous conspiracy. This is a big topic, but just remember not to be gullible when someone claims there is a giant conspiracy. Yes, there are some psychopaths out there, and corporations will look out for their own interests, but there are not entire institutions full of supervillains. No one is hiding the cure for cancer. There isn’t some black ops organization that will swoop in and kill someone who cures a disease or invents something truly useful.
You are not as smart as you think you are. This is true of everyone – of me, of experts, of professionals, and the public at large. The world is a big and extremely complicated place, and science is hard. So show a little humility. The chance that you have pierced the veil, that you have seen with clarity what literally billions of people, and millions of experts, have missed is vanishingly small. If something does not make sense to you, don’t assume the world it broken or evil or conspiring against you. You probably just made a mistake, or don’t know something.
This is why we need to leverage institutions, processes, and crowdsourcing. We need to do careful study and observation, and have experienced people poor over and debate what those studies find, and then put the results through a tested process of regulation that accounts for all possible risks and benefit. It’s time consuming and complex, but that’s the world.
If you think you are so smart that you can give better health advice that millions of experts pooling their expertise, the chancing are overwhelming that you are just guilty of hubris and are spouting nonsense.
This doesn’t mean the experts always get it right. Of course they don’t – as I said, this stuff is complicated, and we don’t know everything. That is also an unreasonable standard, and not a reason to listen to self-proclaimed gurus shooting from the hip. Experts and institutions make mistakes, but there is a process to correct those mistakes, to do things a little better going forward.
So go watch your cat videos – but I would not recommend getting your health advice from randos on social media.
Author
Founder and currently Executive Editor of Science-Based Medicine Steven Novella, MD is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, and the author of the NeuroLogicaBlog, a daily blog that covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also general science, scientific skepticism, philosophy of science, critical thinking, and the intersection of science with the media and society. Dr. Novella also has produced two courses with The Great Courses, and published a book on critical thinking - also called The Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/on-tiktok-everything-is-a-poison-or-superfood/
