In Focus: Social Media and Aesthetics

Misinformation Dangers: The Social Media Factor

Social media can be a wonderful thing—you can more easily than ever stay connected, and it was a lifeline to patients for many practices throughout the pandemic. But there are some pitfalls, including the ease of spreading misinformation.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine led by Dr. John W. Ayers, Co-Founder of the Center for Data Driven Health and Vice Chief of Innovation within the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with the George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University, suggests bots are the primary pathogen of COVID-19 misinformation on social media.

“The coronavirus pandemic has sparked what the World Health Organization has called an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation,” says Dr. Ayers in a news release. “But bots—like those used by Russian agents during the 2016 American presidential election—have been overlooked as a source of COVID-19 misinformation.”

The team identified public Facebook groups that were heavily influenced by bots. The team measured how quickly the same URLs (or links) were shared in a sample of about 300,000 posts made to Facebook groups that shared 251,655 links.

When URLs are repeatedly shared by multiple accounts within seconds of one another, it indicates these are bot accounts controlled by automated software that coordinates their action. The team found that the Facebook groups most influenced by bots averaged 4.28 seconds between shares of identical links, compared to 4.35 hours for the Facebook groups least influenced by bots.

Among Facebook groups least or most influenced by bots, the team monitored posts that shared a link to the Danish Study to Assess Face Masks for the Protection Against COVID-19 Infection (DANMASK-19) randomized clinical trial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “We selected DANMASK-19 for our study because masks are an important public health measure to potentially control the pandemic and are a source of popular debate,” explains Dr. Davey Smith, study coauthor and Chief of Infectious Diseases at UC San Diego.

Thirty-nine percent of all posts sharing the DANMASK-19 trial were made to Facebook groups that were the most influenced by bots compared to nine percent of posts made to Facebook groups the least influenced by bots.

Twenty percent of posts sharing the DANMASK-19 trial made to Facebook groups the most influenced by bots claimed masks harmed the wearer, contrary to scientific evidence. For example, one post read, “Danish study proves...the harmfulness of wearing a mask.” Fifty percent of posts promoted conspiracies such a,s “corporate fact checkers are lying to you! All this to serve their Dystopian #Agenda2030 propaganda.”

Posts sharing the DANMASK-19 trial made to Facebook groups the most influenced by bots were 2.3 times more likely to claim masks harm the wearer and 2.5 times more likely to make conspiratorial claims than posts made to Facebook groups made to Facebook groups the least influenced by bots.

Dr. David A. Broniatowski, Associate Director of the GW Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics, and study coauthor notes, “Our work shows that social media platforms have the ability to detect, and therefore remove, these coordinated bot campaigns. Efforts to purge deceptive bots from social media platforms must become a priority among legislators, regulators, and social media companies who have instead been focused on targeting individual pieces of misinformation from ordinary users.”

The Social Influence

The “Zoom Boom” has been widely reported over the last year. According to the 2020 statistics from the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), 70 percent of AAFPRS surgeons reported an increase in bookings and treatments over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 80 percent saying the “Zoom Effect” is a major contributing factor to this growth. But beyond Zoom, there’s also a social media effect.

Aesthetic physicians have long reported on patients who come in to their offices asking for procedures that will help them look like the Photoshopped or heavily edited selfie posted on their Instagram or Snapchat account. Or patients who want a nose or lips of a celebrity. And according to a recent report from Business Insider, the uptick in butt augmentation procedures reported by The Aesthetic Society is likely due to social media and celebrity trends. They cited a TikTok video that claimed to show a line of people at an airport who had all had Brazilian Butt Lifts (BBL), that has more than 3.2 million views. And reported, “The surgery’s new popularity has even led to a meme: the ‘BBL effect.’ Coined by TikTok creator Antoni Bumba, the BBL effect is the “unbothered confidence of those who have elected to bolster their buttocks.”

WATCH NOW

Photo editing filters on social media apps make it easy for people to remove every flaw with a key tap, but they’re also changing perceptions of beauty. Nazanin Saedi, MD says when these patients present for aesthetic treatments, it’s important to educate them about realistic goals and expectations. Watch the full video here.

Keep an eye on what’s trending on social media if you want to have an idea of which procedures may see an increase in your office in the coming months. It’s also important to keep an eye on these social media trends to know about any not so great skincare tips your patients may be seeing from “influencers” who are not board-certified aesthetic physicians. For example, the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery Association (ASDSA) recently issued an alert to the public about children buying and using “hyaluron pens” to inject hyaluronic acid filler into the epidermal and upper dermal layers of the skin. This trend was reported by ASDSA members who viewed questionable social media videos on platforms like TikTok in which children use these pens to self-inject and promote their use to peers. It’s important to educate patients about dangerous trends like this and be ready to answer their questions. Turn to page 18 to read this month’s “Beauty Counter MD” for tips from Jeanine Downie, MD on how to speak to patients about this.