Health Misinformation on Social Media is Hard to Avoid!
The global anti-vaccine movement and vaccine hesitancy that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic show no signs of abating. According to a survey of U.S. adults, Americans in October 2023 were less likely to view approved vaccines as safe than they were in April 2021. As vaccine confidence falls, health misinformation continues to spread like wildfire on social media and in real life. In my view, we cannot underestimate the dangers of health misinformation and the need to understand why it spreads and what we can do about it. Health misinformation is defined as any health-related claim that is false based on current scientific consensus.
False claims about vaccines: Vaccines are the No. 1 topic of misleading health claims. Some common myths about vaccines include:
- Their supposed link with human diagnoses of autism. Multiple studies have discredited this claim, and it has been firmly refuted by the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Concerns with the COVID-19 vaccine leading to infertility. This connection has been debunked through a systematic review and meta-analysis, one of the most robust forms of synthesizing scientific evidence.
Excerpted from Popular Science
