TikTok (Mis)information: An Assessment of the Understandability and Accuracy of Educational Social Media Content about Contraception

Abstract Background Contraception knowledge and attitudes are largely formed from conversations within one’s social network. More recently, this network has expanded to include social media. As the most used social media platform, we aimed to assess popular contraception videos on TikTok for content understandability and accuracy. Methods This is a secondary analysis of the most viewed, contraception-specific TikTok videos that were previously coded as containing educational messaging in a content-analysis study. We assessed videos for understandability and actionability using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Audiovisual Materials (PEMAT-A/V) instrument and for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (CRAAP) using modified instrument within the health information education literature. Results The 174 videos with educational content scored as understandable but not actionable in PEMAT-A/V assessment, with videos created by healthcare providers (HCPs) scoring higher than those by non-HCPs in six of eleven domains of understandability. Videos overall scored well in relevance and purpose within the CRAAP assessment. Videos created by HCP’s (n = 99) scored higher than those by non-HCPs (n = 75) in relevance (p < 0.001), authority (p < 0.001), accuracy (p < 0.001), and purpose (p < 0.001). Regarding video engagement, of all video views, 79.2% were of HCP-created videos and 20.8% were of non-HCP videos. Discussion Much of the contraceptive educational messaging on TikTok is understandable, relevant, and accurate, though these metrics differ between videos created by HCPs as compared to other creators. The videos created by HCP also had greater metrics of engagement. Given this, we encourage HCPs to use social media to better inform its users.