A quality assessment of YouTube content on shoulder instability

The Internet is a widely used resource for patients seeking health information, yet little editing or regulations are imposed on posted material. We sought to assess the quality and accuracy of information presented on shoulder instability on the online video platform YouTube. We hypothesize that YouTube videos concerning shoulder instability will be of little quality, accuracy, and reliability.

The first 50 YouTube videos resulting from the keyword query 'shoulder instability' were analyzed. The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark criteria (score range, 0-4) was used to assess video accuracy and reliability, and the Global Quality Score (GQS; score range, 0-5) was used to assess the quality of the video's educational content along with a generated Shoulder-Specific Score (SSS).

The 50 videos observed collectively had 5,007,486 views, with the mean number of views being 100,149.72 ± 227,218.04. Of all videos observed, 32% were from a medical source and 56% had content relating to pathology information. The mean JAMA score was 2.84 ± 0.74, with the highest scores coming from academic sources. The mean GQS and SSS scores were 2.68 ± 0.84 and 5.30 ± 3.78. The mean GQS score was highest in videos from medical sources (3.3 ± 0.8) and videos about surgical technique/approach (3.2 ± 1.1). Advertisements were negative predictors of the JAMA score (β = -0.324, P = 0.014), and academic (β = 0.322, P = 0.015) and physician sources (β = 0.356, P = 0.008) were positive predictors.

YouTube videos on shoulder instability are of low quality and accuracy and are not reliable. Care providers should be aware of the overall low quality of information available on YouTube regarding shoulder instability.