It’s hard to have missed the debate about whether social media harms mental health or spreads misinformation.

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Less discussed, perhaps, is its role in the medicalisation of everyday life and the growing consumerisation of health. Social media platforms are a vast, barely regulated health marketplace.

Decades of research show how commercial interests shape our understanding of illness and play a role in turning healthy people into patients.

“Technology amplifies patterns that were already underway, such as the commodification of medicine and the rise of influencer-driven commerce,” tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker told me while I was researching my book Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health.

Trust is at the heart of healthcare. Research shows it shapes whether people seek help, how consistently they take their treatment and how comfortable they feel in sharing their concerns. When patients feel that health systems are failing them - or that professionals are not listening - plenty of others are ready to step into that vacuum.

Influencers and online communities offer recognition and a sense that someone understands what you’re going through. In these spaces, personal stories and lived experience often carry more authority than formal qualifications. That change is reshaping who people trust about their health.

This may be no bad thing. But it does come with challenges. Social media is replete with unfettered advertising. There’s plenty of merch to sell and sponsorship deals to be had. And many of these relationships between influencers and companies are not disclosed - what may seem like compelling health advice is far from impartial.

Medicine is built on uncertainty. Social media rewards certainty and simplicity. It’s an anecdote factory and algorithms amplify posts that trigger strong emotional responses, such as fear and relief.

Influencers tell compelling stories about their health. All manner of symptoms, diagnoses, tests and treatments are packaged to go viral.

The message is often that something is wrong with you, and here is the protocol, the wearable, the supplement or the scan that can fix it. Yet we often have little idea whether many of these trending interventions help. In some cases, they cause harm.

Take the promotion of full-body scans. These are marketed as early-detection tools by celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, with some influencers even offering discount codes. They are frequently described as lifesaving. In reality they often reveal what doctors call incidental findings - harmless abnormalities that appear suspicious. Once detected, they can trigger a clinical cascade of further scans, biopsies and appointments, drawing healthy people into months of anxiety and unnecessary intervention.

When people struggle to get diagnostic tests or clear answers on the NHS, private companies promise control. Home blood tests, microbiome panels and hormone tracking are marketed as ways to decode the body when health systems feel slow. Many lack robust scientific evidence, yet they can leave people convinced they are ill, leading to restrictive diets or costly treatment plans with little benefit.

At the same time, ordinary life is increasingly medicalised. Influencers frame everyday experiences as signs of hidden conditions. Behaviours that fall within the wide spectrum of normal human variation in conditions such as ADHD are presented as symptoms needing treatment - with creators offering solutions.

Natural processes are reframed as disease. Ageing becomes a hormone deficiency requiring correction. Treatments are promoted as routes to optimisation or longevity, often without a balanced discussion of risks.

Even medical language is appropriated. Clinical terms migrate into influencer vocab stripped of their original meaning. Concepts from developmental psychology are loosely applied to adult behaviour, giving everyday distraction or forgetfulness the appearance of medical meaning.

Meanwhile the body is increasingly treated as a dashboard that must be constantly monitored. Wearables track sleep patterns, heart rate variability and blood glucose levels in otherwise healthy people. Continuous data can be useful in clinical settings, but outside them, it risks turning normal biological fluctuations into cause for concern.

Overlaying all of this is what might be called “scienceploitation”. Influencers deploy complex scientific language about circadian rhythms or dopamine regulation to sell supplements and lifestyle “protocols”. The terminology lends products an aura of legitimacy even when meaningful human evidence is lacking.

In many ways, all of this is the snake oil industry of the 21st century.

The algorithm is for engagement and anxiety sells. And social media is rife with people claiming to have a cure.

Dr Deborah Cohen was previously the Science Editor for ITV News and Health Correspondent for BBC Newsnight. She is also the author of the newly released Bad Influence.

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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

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