What looks like another trend video of someone taking you on their daily walk takes a turn when TikTok user @JemsWellness, a self-described “biohacking wife,” casually suggests that her followers “rethink” taking the contraceptive pill. She tells them in a video how she’s just learned that it’s “been classified as a class one carcinogen by the World Health Organization.” 

The user explains that it means “there is enough evidence to conclude that it can cause cancer,” before telling others to either seek out alternative forms of contraception.

The Fuller Project highlights this video in a new report on misinformation about the contraceptive pill. It explains that, yes, it is true that the pill has been listed by WHO as a carcinogen, and the video does suggest users “carefully evaluate contraceptive options before use,” but what Jems Wellness fails to mention is that the group one listing is not new, the report explains, it doesn’t apply to all types of birth control pills, and it says nothing about the risk level. 

Despite excluding this information, the video has gone viral. It has more than three million views and 257,000 likes, with the hashtags #BirthControlPill and #contraception pushing the post further than the influencer’s 12,000 followers. 

@jemswellness

Birth control is a class one carcinogen. Not all birth control is the same so please check which ones pose the most risk BEFORE taking it. #birthcontrolpill #birthcontroloptions #birthcontrolsideeffects #contraception #floapp #floappreview #knowledgeispower #healthiswealth

♬ original sound - Jems Wellness

Videos like the ones by Jems Wellness blend personal anecdotes with pseudoscience. But what qualifications do ‘wellness’ influencers like this have to be able to talk about contraception so absolutely? The report goes on to explore the impact of misinformation and its influence on the declining use of the contraceptive pill. 

The Fuller Project references a recent analysis by academics at La Trobe University in Australia of the top five hashtags related to contraception on TikTok, which garnered 4.85 billion combined views, revealing that only 1 in 10 posts were created by health professionals. Overall, content is of “poor reliability and quality, indicating a prominent presence of contraceptive health misinformation,” the La Trobe researchers wrote.

On social media, just about anybody can post about anything. And while TikTok does have policies against medical misinformation, and the app has removed videos promoting birth control misinformation in the past following an investigation by The Independent, videos continue to circulate from non-professionals and non-experts. 

The Fuller Project report says that “sexual health experts in the UK fear that this increasingly prevalent misinformation, along with fears about side effects, are leading to falling numbers of people taking the pill and growing mistrust of healthcare professionals.”

When that mistrust begins to form, it is hard to redevelop that relationship. Now, when we hear something on social media, we’re more inclined to trust it as fact than ever before. According to Ofcom, more than half of UK adults (52 per cent) use social media as a news source, with PA Media reporting that platforms’ trustworthiness is nearing that of traditional media. In a survey, 43 per cent of respondents ranked social media news as trustworthy, compared with 69 per cent for broadcast and 66 per cent for print.

The rising trust in social media and decreasing trust in real-life professionals are the perfect grounds for misinformation to spread. And that is exactly what seems to be happening with the contraceptive pill.

TikTok is magnifying the negative experiences of taking the pill. While side effects are well documented, common things like headaches, breast tenderness, and mood changes are almost expected among those who take it, but the more serious occurrences of blood clots or severe depression are being highlighted on social media, causing an adverse opinion of the contraceptive.

Dr Frances Yarlett, medical director at women’s health research platform The Lowdown and an NHS GP, told The Fuller Project that “there are certainly some women who feel very emotional, have lots of mood swings, and can get irritable, anxious or depressed.” 

The report also references a 2018 Danish study of more than one million women that found in the first few months of pill use, the likelihood of being diagnosed with depression rose 1.8 times, while suicide attempts or suicides roughly doubled. So the facts are there, and the serious side effects are not something to cast aside. But when the extreme or more rare side effects are going viral on social media, we are entering a dangerous territory. 

And that is how the information spread by online ‘wellness’ influencers lands so effectively. These people “amplify individual experiences, cherry-pick scientific data and research in order to provide generalised advice that aligns with their worldview—and, often, their commercial interests,” the report states.

Many of us have heard from friends or have experienced ourselves some of these more serious side effects; there was certainly a year of my life on the pill that was lost to depressive episodes. What I thought was a stressful new job turned out to be a result of a contraceptive pill that didn’t work for me, personally. But the pill is not bad for everyone. And what is positive is that people are now searching for more information about its impact on managing menstruation. It’s just less positive that experts are drowned out by misinformed noise. 

Still, 874 million women worldwide now use modern contraceptives, according to WHO, whether that is implants, intrauterine devices (IUDs), pills, injections, patches, or other forms—so although contraception pill use may be declining, it is still common.

And with more people searching for information, there are attempts to combat the misinformation. Policy efforts include the Online Safety Act, which came into effect earlier this year, recognising that “the most harmful illegal online content disproportionately affects women and girls.” But the fullminfluence of the act is yet to be seen as stages continue to be rolled out. 

What is important is the continuing discussions about contraceptives and women’s rights, now more than ever. In recent years, we’ve seen our fates be determined by males in power (the overturning of Roe vs Wade being a devastating one). 

And just last week, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration targeted a federal office that oversees a $300 million family planning programme for layoffs. It said this raised fears, according to three people with knowledge of the events, that the government is effectively ending an initiative that provides contraception for millions of low-income women.

Caroline Kitchener writes that the decimation of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs “threatens” a programme that has existed for over 50 years and “also offers testing for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, as well as basic infertility care.”

Although, positively, in the UK, MPs voted earlier this year to change abortion legislation to stop women in England and Wales from being prosecuted for ending their pregnancy. The vote to decriminalise the procedure is the biggest change to abortion laws in England and Wales for nearly 60 years, as reported by the BBC. There was also news that British parents will be entitled to bereavement leave if they lose a pregnancy before 24 weeks, under Labour’s workers’ rights reforms.

So while we are up against swaths of information when it comes to contraception, bombarding us from every angle, it’s important to seek out the facts. If you see something on social media that worries you, always check in with professional sources, like the NHS or sexual health charity Brook. It will give you peace of mind and the ability to make informed choices about your body.