Helping teens find good health influencers
Having a doctor as a parent might seem like a great way to pass good health information to the next generation, but teens would rather listen to almost any other voice. Here's how to guide them.
“You’re not a real doctor, like Dr. Mike,” said my 14-year-old recently, comparing me, a board-certified pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), to his favorite social media medical influencer.
For the uninitiated, Dr. Mike — a.k.a. Mike Varshavski — is a board certified family medicine physician, albeit one with 29 million followers, according to his website. I’m a fan myself, especially as he recently tackled the public health threats of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. But what my teen’s comment highlights is how even my own child would prefer to get health information from a doctor on YouTube than the doctor who lives in his house.
Anyone raising a teen knows that it can be hard to puncture their conviction that they, and not their parents, are right. At least my son has found an online influencer worthy of his trust. I frequently face tougher challenges in my exam room, dispelling myths that adolescents learned online on topics such as nutritional supplements, beauty trends, vaccines, and screen time. My medical degree and training pale beside the humorous videos with flashy captions that scroll by on their phones, seemingly by the minute.
To meet my patients where they are, I also share health tips on my personal Instagram account and spotlight trusted medical influencers on my CHOP pediatric podcast, Primary Care Perspectives, so that the online community of trusted healthcare professionals grows, and we balance out the ubiquitous influencers spreading misinformation.
But it is impossible for all pediatricians to build an online platform with Dr. Mike’s reach — never mind countering influencers without his qualifications — which is why it is important to teach children and their caregivers how to discern who and what to trust online.
As a trusted source of information for patients and families, CHOP is addressing some of the bad information online by sharing more evidence-based content on a new Pediatric Health Chat website. CHOP clinicians collect hot topics directly from our patients and families and then display the monthly trends with expert advice to counter any misinformation. Pediatric Health Chat is a source that children and caregivers can trust online to answer the questions that circulate elsewhere.
When content isn’t coming from Pediatric Health Chat, I want patients to understand how to evaluate it. Rather than debating whether a particular post is true, I explain to them how I explore whether to believe something I see online:
First, consider the source and their credentials. Is the content coming from a trusted institution or multiple research publications or is it one person’s opinion that hasn’t been replicated elsewhere? Does the source have a bias in promoting this content, such as income or fame?
Next, is this new information or something that has been proven repeatedly? If a new perspective, I look into where it came from, the sources cited, and whether other trusted sources are corroborating it.
Lastly, why do I believe this to be true? Is the material pulling at my heartstrings and I want it to be true? Was this material promoted for me through an algorithm or did I find it organically?
These questions help me check my biases. There are many other strategies for verifying online content, but with these few questions, I can get teens thinking critically about the content they view online so that they can approach information strategically even outside my exam room walls.
I encourage parents to model critical thinking about media. When we teach children to cook, we discuss kitchen safety, so we should teach online safety when we hand over a smartphone. Establishing a Family Media Plan can help children and caregivers communicate about what the rules and limits are and the reasoning behind them so that expectations are clear. This plan could include teens and caregivers communicating with each other when they see health topics that might have bad information.
As for my own teen, I shared that “real doctors” sometimes look like influencers with millions of followers. And sometimes they look like pediatrician moms, like me, doing their best for the teen right in front of them.
Editor’s note: Pediatric Health Chat is a new online initiative at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia taking aim at the latest myths and misconceptions about children’s health. CHOP pediatrician Katie Lockwood and neonatologist Joanna J. Parga-Belinkie share on the chat what they’ve been hearing from their own patients and their colleagues on hot topics such as vitamins, nutrition, and vaccines.