768 - Youtube and TikTok as Sources of Medical Information for Long COVID

Objectives: Physiatrists are uniquely poised to treat long COVID patients, to such an extent that national physiatry organizations have launched multispecialty collaborations and national calls to action for long COVID. Social media platforms are a popular means of sharing medical information online. To our knowledge, no study has examined the quality of long COVID information on YouTube and TikTok.

Design: TikTok and YouTube were separately queried in October 2022 for videos. The top hundred YouTube videos for “long COVID” in the past year and for “#longCOVID” on TikTok in the past six months were analyzed. A total of 154 videos (TikTok n=69; YouTube n=85) met inclusion criteria. Descriptive characteristics included creator type, video duration, view count, number of likes and content assessment (incidence, symptoms, testing, treatment and prognosis). Each video was assessed by two independent reviewers using the Global Quality Scale and mDISCERN scale, measures of quality of health information delivery.

Results: TikTok videos were viewed significantly more than Youtube videos, and had 30 times greater odds of being rated by reviewers as low quality instead of high quality (mDISCERN scale). A significantly greater proportion of TikTok videos were created by the general public. By contrast, news stations, medical professionals, and medical organizations tended to released videos on Youtube. YouTube videos were significantly longer than TikTok videos and were more likely to be rated as higher quality on both the mDISCERN and GQS scales. None of the videos discussed physiatry.

Conclusions: To position physiatry at the forefront of public awareness and education on long COVID, physiatrists can consider creating long COVID educational videos for social media. This can not only increase public awareness of the specialty, but also improve the quality of health information on these platforms. Higher quality videos on long COVID are especially needed on TikTok, where low quality videos are pervasive.