Social media today offer simple and direct ways to interact with people, e.g. on medical issues. However, only a small part of this information has ever been checked for accuracy. In addition, the worldwide Internet is full of posts and forums that are more committed to commercial interests or targeted misinformation than to factual information. Unfortunately, urology is no exception - so has it long been time for urologists to counter this with facts online?
Social media are applications that primarily serve to disseminate content and at the same time network with other people. In 2019, for example, around 72% of the adult population in the USA were still using more than one channel, with YouTube and Facebook leading the way.
In recent years, more and more medical societies and medical practices have also produced content for the internet. Urology does not escape from this trend of content creation, done by research centers, experts, institutions and practicing physicians. But also laymen and laywomen express themselves freely on medical topics, either through their own contributions or in response to particularly successful articles and statements. However, whether such contributions are facts or fake news has never been systematically investigated before. A current review now wants to change this.
To this end, researchers examined statements in other papers and looked at the 50 most cited articles on urological issues on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest, among others. The result: 70% of the articles on prostate carcinoma were wrong, as were 30% of the kidney articles and 10% on the PSA test. But that alone is not the worst thing, because, as a rule, wrong articles were shared 28 times more often than professionally correct articles.
The same was also true for video content, e.g. about prostate cancer on YouTube. Up to 77% of the videos reviewed there were inaccurate or in some way biased. In addition, the worse the content of a video, the more popular it was and the more it was shared across social media platforms.
The same is true for videos on kidney stones. Here, too, it is noticeable that only about half of the films can be adequately used to find out more about the topic. Instead, many of the misleading videos primarily advertise supposedly effective herbal tinctures and other things.
False information and misleading statements are particularly widespread, however, especially in the area of conflict between "sexual performance and virility". Here, a high level of suffering meets supposedly "salvation-promising" explanatory videos and texts, whereby the primary aim is to pass on men's concern for their sexuality and desire for fatherhood to overpriced offers.
Nor is it of any use to provide overly positive reports, for example on the topics of "unfulfilled desire to have children" and "therapies to increase fertility". Here, unfortunately, disproportionate success rates are too often propagated, which can greatly exaggerate the expectations of affected people and ultimately push the personal dilemma even further.
1. We recommend urology professionals to question and discuss with your patients their online sources and information about urological diseases.
2. And most critical of all, urologists themselves can become multipliers of technically sound information on the Internet. Experiment and use social media, and become a fact-consistent content creator, distributor, or fact-checker, to improve the information available to readers. The fight against fake news, is everyone's responsibility.
Original source:
Loeb S et al, Eur Urol Focus 2020; 6(3): 437-439