ABC News98%
New study finds many Americans are getting their health and wellness information from influencers. 96%
5/8/2026, 12:35:41 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Availability Heuristic, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 58% saturation with 213 hits. Analysis detected 1,291 faulty-reasoning hits from 367 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 93.2% and a BS Rank of 96% (791 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 95.30% of the video peer group.
A new study finds many Americans get their health and wellness information from social media influencers.
Let's break down the data in tonight's by the numbers.
40% of US adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center say that they get their health and wellness news from influencers.
54% say the influencers help them better understand how to be healthy.
When researchers looked at influencer profiles, 86% of them were predominantly on Instagram, followed by Tik Tok and then YouTube.
41% of influencers described themselves as some sort of health care professional with just under half saying they were conventional medical providers like doctors or dentists.
31% of influencers called themselves coaches.
In one of the surveys conducted as part of the study, 10% of followers said that they trust all or most of the information from influencers.
65% say they trust some of it.
And lastly, this is interesting finding.
14% said a major reason they followed these influencers was to learn about things they did not want to ask their doctor about.
Let's bring in ABC News medical contributor Dr. Aloque Patel.
Great to see you Dr. Patel.
Let's start with that small percentage admitting that they turn to influencers rather than talking to their doctor about something.
What's their reaction to that?
You Lindsay, off the bat, I'm not surprised by that reaction because people are able to go and get instantaneous information in a world where not everyone has access to healthcare professionals.
It also means that we need to do a better job of reaching our patients where they are and building trust and being out in the community and being available digitally whether through your own personal brand or through an institution and making sure that consumers really understand how to get good highquality evidence-based information.
Because let's be real, Lindsay, anybody can go online and claim to be a health or wellness influencer and pedal misinformation.
And I like that statistic that only 10% of people are really trusting what they see online
because a lot of people know that some of that information is not verified.
Analysis
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