1 week ago
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A pediatric expert says false health information online is making his job harder and putting young people at real risk.
CLEVELAND — Scroll through social media for a few minutes and you're bound to find someone offering health advice. Some of it is helpful. A lot of it isn't. One doctor who treats teenagers and young adults says the consequences of that misinformation show up in his exam room every day.
According to Scott E. Hadland, MD, MPH, MS, chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Mass General Brigham for Children and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, roughly one in five teens regularly turn to social media for health information, with TikTok leading the way. The algorithm, he notes, doesn't distinguish between accurate content and harmful conte...
