Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Nowadays, social media has become a valuable source of health-related information which can have an important impact on people’s behaviors and decisions regarding their diseases. To improve management of diabetes, patients often seek health information in social media platforms, including Youtube. However, the nature of its content, which anyone can upload, isn’t always reliable and scientifically accurate, sometimes even misleading. The aim of this study is to analyse false informations in diabetes related youtube videos.

Methods: A YouTube query using the search terms “diabetes treatment” in arab language was performed at the date of January 17th 2023. The most viewed 50 videos which first appeared in the search results were included in the analysis. We assessed the veracity of informations contained in every video. The nature, publisher, and supposed aim of false informations was noted.

Results: The percentage of videos containing false informations was 63% of the total; The titles contained 75% and the “poster” 75% of misleading data. 77% of the videos were published by profiles presenting themselves as doctors. The topics containing the highest percentage of false infomaiotns were alternativs medicine (100%), dietetics (76%), Treatement (72%) and pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes (52%). 37% of the videos contained religious content, 63% encouraged diabetics to stop their medications. 49% of the posters declared negative opinions about the medical community, and the same percentage had anti-conspiracy opinions.

Conclusion: False and misleading informations are widespread in Arabic speaking diabetes related videos of youtube. Patient education should therefore include awareness that this social media should not be considered a reliable source of diabetes information and management.