Oral Health Misinformation on Youtube - A Content Analysis

With the rise of social media and widespread smartphone use, information is now readily accessible worldwide. However, the credibility of this information often remains unchecked. Few studies have evaluated oral health content on online platforms. However, YouTube, despite its popularity, is frequently overlooked. This study aims to identify and analyze oral health misinformation on YouTube.

A search was done on YouTube using common keywords related to oral health through Google chrome browser with incognito mode to limit the bias associated with Google accounts. The videos obtained were subjected to analysis using a coding framework and both auditory and visual content were examined together by two coders to ensure a comprehensive coding process. All the videos were classified either as accurate information (useful) or misleading information.

A total of 72 videos were included in the study, of which about 55% of them had misleading content. About 75% of the videos containing misleading information were created by non-professionals and only about 15% of the videos containing misleading information were created by medical professionals. It was surprising to note that the misleading information had more positive engagement metric (137429) than the useful information (71207).

From the content analysis, it was found that there was a large amount of misleading information on oral health in YouTube. Therefore, it's crucial to address the potential risks of misleading content and to increase public awareness about the impact of following such misleading information.