TikTok’s Birth Control Misinformation Sparks Concern and an Evidence-Based Australian Response
If you are a woman on TikTok, the chances are that your algorithm has, at some point, served you a video warning against hormonal birth control. The comments are stark and often unsettling: “Birth control is literally one of the worst things you can put in your body as a woman,” “I never have been and I never will be on hormonal birth control,” and “Our generation is literally the clinical trial for the pill.” Searching for terms like contraception, the pill or IUD quickly pulls users into a void of content where earnest personal testimony, alarming side-effect lists and before-and-after body comparisons combine to create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Some videos show women reading the long list of possible side effects that come with the contraceptive pill, while others celebrate the experience of coming off hormonal contraception entirely. What is striking to health professionals is who is creating this content: not doctors or nurses, but influencers, self-described “naturopaths” and ordinary women. These creators often speak with the confidence of experts, using medical-sounding language and displaying documents that resemble official pharmaceutical inserts. They may not intend harm, but their reach is enormous. The videos attract thousands of comments from young women who share their own anxieties, creating an echo chamber in which negative experiences are amplified and positive ones remain invisible. Clinicians say this has become a significant obstacle to reproductive health, as patients arrive at appointments already convinced that contraception is dangerous, and are sometimes reluctant to consider evidence-based options. The problem is not that women share their experiences; it is that these experiences are often presented as representative and conclusive, while TikTok’s algorithm ensures that the most extreme content is the most widely seen.
Dr Evonne Ong, a GP and medical adviser to Health Direct, the national health advice service, has watched these trends with concern. She says the content is rarely intentionally malicious, but recurring themes are problematic. In her consultations, younger women frequently raise side effects such as weight gain and acne, as well as the fear that hormonal contraception will damage their future fertility. None of these fears, she says, is supported by clinical evidence. The idea that the pill or an IUD could make it harder to become pregnant later in life is widespread online but has no basis in medical research. Dr Ong also points to a structural reason for the misinformation: women who have positive experiences with contraception are far less likely to take to social media to talk about them. Those who have negative experiences, by contrast, often feel a strong urge to warn others. The result is a deeply skewed picture, in which a handful of bad experiences is made to look like the norm, and the experiences of millions of women who use contraception without problems are effectively erased from the conversation. When a patient comes in already afraid, a doctor’s first job is often to undo that fear before any meaningful conversation about contraception can happen. That takes time and trust, and not every consultation allows for it. In the meantime, the myth that hormonal contraception causes permanent infertility continues to circulate, prompting some women to rely on less effective methods or to discontinue contraception altogether, with consequences that can include unplanned pregnancy. The irony is that many of the same voices that warn against hormonal contraception also advocate for “natural” methods that require far more vigilance and are considerably less reliable.
Academic research has begun to quantify the scale of the problem. A study published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics earlier this year found that the majority of TikTok videos about birth control were made by non-medical professionals and were based on personal experiences rather than scientific evidence. The study also found a broadly negative sentiment towards hormonal contraception, with the hormonal IUD attracting particular hostility. A separate 2025 study from La Trobe University examined 100 TikTok videos with a combined total of nearly 5 billion views. It concluded that the information available on the platform undermines patients’ ability to make confident, informed decisions about contraception. The content breakdown was striking: half of the videos came from “general uploaders,” 15 per cent from people calling themselves hormone health coaches, and another 15 per cent from self-described health educators. Only 10 per cent were made by medical professionals. Lead author Caroline de Moel said the overall quality and reliability of the information was poor, and roughly half of the creators explicitly discouraged the use of hormonal contraception, including pills, implants, injections and hormonal IUDs. Many of the same creators promoted natural methods like cycle tracking, but rarely explained that these methods require strict adherence and have significant limitations. The sheer scale of the viewership matters. Five billion views is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the world’s population watching a video, and the vast majority of those views are of content that has not been vetted for accuracy. The platform’s recommendation system does not distinguish between a peer-reviewed study and an influencer’s anecdote; it simply identifies what keeps users watching. For reproductive health, the consequences can be measured in the number of patients who come to appointments asking whether their contraception is poisoning them, or whether they are destroying their fertility.
Dr de Moel is clear that there is nothing wrong with women sharing personal experiences online. The distinction she draws is between anecdote and evidence. “The problem with TikTok is the content that provokes the most emotional reactions such as fear or anger … they get the most views, comments and shares,” she says. “The algorithm doesn’t check if the content is accurate; it just rewards engagement so the most visible content is not the most reliable one.” Her study also found that approximately one-third of content creators expressed distrust in healthcare professionals. That is a troubling finding, because it means that the messages with the greatest reach are not only inaccurate but actively teach viewers to reject the people best equipped to help them. It also makes the correction of misinformation harder: if a young woman believes that her doctor is either ignorant or part of a conspiracy, she is unlikely to accept reassurance. Dr de Moel believes, however, that the solution is not to abandon social media. Instead, she argues, healthcare professionals should be present, creating accurate and engaging content that can compete with the misinformation. “We want their expertise out there; it needs to compete with all the stuff that’s not correct,” she says. The distrust finding is particularly concerning because it aligns with a broader cultural drift in which institutions are questioned and personal intuition is elevated over expertise. If a creator tells her followers that doctors are too quick to prescribe hormones and that real health lies in “natural” living, she is tapping into a deep vein of scepticism that predates TikTok. The platform merely concentrates and accelerates it. Dr de Moel acknowledges that asking busy health professionals to become influencers is a big ask, but she argues that the alternative—leaving the field to unqualified creators—is worse.
The Australian federal government has also entered the conversation. Assistant Minister for Health and Women Rebecca White has expressed concern about the growth of mis- and disinformation in healthcare, especially around contraception. “There’s a lot of mis and disinformation that is confusing for people as they’re making decisions about their contraception choices,” she says. In response, the government has partnered with Health Direct to create the Contraception Options Finder, an online tool described as the first of its kind in Australia. The tool uses an easy-to-take quiz to provide evidence-based information for men, women and gender diverse people. It is designed to help users understand which contraceptive options might be best suited to their health needs and preferences, and to give them a reliable foundation for discussion with healthcare professionals. Dr Ong, who was involved in developing the tool, says it was tailored to an Australian audience, including details about which options are funded under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and which are not. “It gives a really good indication of particularly which medications and options are funded by the Australian government under the PBS and which ones aren’t,” she says. The tool is not a diagnostic device and it does not replace medical consultations. Rather, it is intended to give people a starting point and a vocabulary for discussing their options with a clinician. Ms White said the government hoped it would make it easier for people to navigate what has become an increasingly confusing landscape. “It’s about making sure they’ve got the right facts before them, based on what is best for them, for them to then have an informed discussion with their healthcare professional,” she said. For Dr Ong, the fact that the tool is Australian-specific is an important feature. Much of the information circulating online comes from overseas, where costs, availability and even the names of contraceptive products can be different.
Dr Ong’s advice to women who turn to social media for health information is pragmatic. “Go for it but also take what you see with a pinch of salt,” she says. “People are more likely to publish things when they’ve had a bad experience with them because they want to warn the public. They are coming from a place of good intention generally, but it’s important to remember that they are only a handful of people. People who have had generally really good experiences are perhaps less likely to talk about them on social media.” That final observation is at the heart of the issue. In an attention economy, the loudest voices are not necessarily the most representative or the most accurate. The challenge for public health is to ensure that evidence-based information is not relegated to the shadows, but is available where people are actually looking. The Contraception Options Finder is one attempt to meet that challenge, alongside researchers’ calls for doctors to become content creators themselves. The broader point is not that social media is inherently bad. It can be a valuable source of peer support, and many women find comfort in knowing that they are not alone in their struggles. But peer support is not the same as evidence, and an echo chamber is not a clinical guideline. The rise of the “hormone health coach”—a title with no regulated meaning—illustrates the void that medical professionals have left open. The response, according to Dr de Moel and others, is not to censor or lecture women, but to be present with accurate, engaging information that respects their intelligence. Ultimately, the goal is simple: to ensure that when a woman makes a decision about her contraception, she does so with her eyes open, armed with evidence rather than anxiety.
