The future of social media in health and wellness, and how to avoid being negatively affected by it.

 Since the introduction of social media, fitness and health professionals and influencers have been using it to reach potential customers and make money. Obviously, fitness and health professionals are offering a service, such as coaching, or trying to get you to buy a product, such as a health supplement, while influencers take the approach of gradually gaining your attention (as well as many other people's attention) until they have reached a point where they have an audience big enough to market other people's products (this can be advertising another company's clothing or supplement merchandise, or even just creating enough content on platforms such as youtube so that they can be paid directly through ad revenue from the platform). 

This trend is actually not new or specific to social media. Prior to the influence of Instagram and Facebook in the early 2010s, there were shows in the 2000s, such as Dr. Oz, which marketed "too good to be true" supplements to desperate viewers who were looking for a quick fix to their health problems. Before that, high-profile bodybuilders and models would advertise products and training programs through magazines. The only thing that changed because of social media is that they now have their own platform and can appeal to an audience in real time, rather than waiting for a magazine to publish their content/secret miracle fitness advice or waiting for a TV host to notice them and bring them onto their show. 

To be honest, because this trend is decades old at this point, I don't expect it will change anytime soon. Social media isn't going anywhere; the only social media changes we will likely see are potential implementations of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, and that could lead to new platforms being created and popularized, as well as the gradual die-off of current platforms such as Twitter/X and Facebook. Even that is speculation, though, because both of those platforms feature prominent influencers and communities (there are many Facebook groups for different kinds of health advice, sport participation, and health practitioners, for example). There are plenty of people on social media who pass off non-science-based advice, whether that's "Liver King" and "Sean Baker MD" promoting their carnivore diet, or Robert F Kennedy Jr and our new surgeon general Casey Means who parlayed their anti-vaccination paranoia popularity into political gain (they are both now government officials of important health departments who are unqualified or underqualified). 

So now that we've established this problem isn't actually new and won't be going away anytime soon, how can you (the consumer) avoid being harmed or drawn in by it? Luckily, there are also plenty of science-based people on social media, such as Menno Henselmans, Jeff Nippard, and Dr. Layne Norton, who generally do a good job of debunking these claims. There are also researchers such as Stuart Phillips and Eric Helms who post the results of their research on social media, and many of the articles they post are open access or at least have a summary associated with them. If you actually care about getting stronger, looking better, and living a longer and healthier life, try to follow as many science-based accounts as you can. 

If that doesn't do the trick, there are also many articles that are open access on PubMed. If you still have questions about a specific claim or subject made by one of the "disinfluencers" or "grifters", don't be afraid to look for the evidence of their claims yourself. Many times the open-access articles on PubMed will explain exactly what a study found, without a biased person twisting the results to support their narrative. Even if you don't understand the technical/science-based language, you can sometimes download the PDF of the article and then upload it to ChatGPT or Gemini and ask it to simplify the article so that you can understand it. Just because you don't have a degree in movement science, nutrition, or pharmacology doesn't mean that you can't accurately evaluate the information that's currently available. You just have to think critically and learn to use your resources.