Breast Cancer Prevention Misinformation on Pinterest: One Side of a Thick Coin

Is using social media detrimental to cancer prevention? Wilner and Holton examined 178 breast cancer prevention and treatment pins from Pinterest. They found that 51.1% contained misinformation, more than half of which made exaggerated claims for anticancer or cancer prevention effects.¹ We subsequently identified 82 cancer and social media articles and reviewed 27 (2011 to present; 16 from the past two years) focused on breast cancer prevention policy (e.g., cancer nutrition, self-examination, and mammography). Wilner and Holton’s findings are corroborated by the pieces we reviewed identifying breast cancer misinformation on Facebook (two articles), Pinterest (two), Reddit (one), Twitter (two), YouTube (one), and news digital media (two). The range of sampled content containing misinformation was 48.5% on Pinterest, which were mainly associated with commercial bias,² and 14.7% on Twitter, which were pieces that were not scientifically supported.³ Moreover, Johnson et al., examining 200 cancer social media articles, identified misinformation in 32.5% (n = 65); only Pinterest engagements lacked harmful content.⁴

Social media can serve a useful health promotion purpose. Pinterest posts often relay early detection, treatment, and hereditary breast cancer survivorship stories with educational value. However, they spare little attention to counseling processes or promoting conversations with relatives and doctors to mitigate risk.⁵ Similarly, individuals and organizations use Twitter to advance awareness, with such messaging peaking during breast cancer awareness month. Yet, many of these tweets deliver fundraising messages rather than advising specific actions.

As health agencies and networks harness social media for breast cancer prevention via accurate, actionable health messaging, the choice of sender becomes crucial. Because of the Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee and other research breaches, members of at-risk minoritized groups may be hesitant to receive messages from health care systems. The adoption of mommy bloggers targeting mothers and daughters and community-specific social influencers has proven effective in engaging users, especially when senders and users are culturally matched.⁶ Nuancing Wilner and Holton’s conclusions, evidence suggests visuals and diverse images can heighten willingness to access cancer-related messages among users from varied racial/ethnic backgrounds.⁶

Business and legal authorities have proposed coalition-based models of social media industry self-regulation (e.g., the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority). Although it actively filters out misinformation, Pinterest could benefit from a hands-on community advisory. For the everyday monitoring of content, fact-checking by consumer groups themselves can help instill ownership in the critical assessment and discerning use of social media platforms.⁷ We propose using the full potential of social media and informed stakeholders to disseminate accurate breast cancer prevention messaging.