Sunscreen misinformation uncommon on TikTok, but highly engaged

Photo by greenwish _ via Prexels

Findings from a new study show sunscreen is overwhelmingly promoted in popular TikTok videos. However, sunscreen-related content containing health misinformation has disproportionately high audience engagement.

The findings were published in PLOS Digital Health.

For the study, lead author Alessandro Marcon and his colleagues conducted a content analysis on 971 of the most viewed TikTok videos across the five most popular and relevant sunscreen-related hashtags. Those hashtags were #sunscreen, #sunscreenviral, #spf, #sunscreenreview, and #sunprotection.  Marcon is a research associate at the University of Alberta’s Health Law Institute.

The team assessed differences in audience engagement, including views, likes, shares, and comments, between TikToks that only promoted sunscreen, those that included both promotion and critique, and those that solely critiqued sunscreen.

Most videos promoted sunscreen use (86.8%), typically to prevent skin damage (17.4%), acne (15.3%), aging (11.5%), and cancer (6.1%). Only a small fraction contained critiques (6.0%), with very few asserting sunscreen causes harm (1.5%) or prevents health benefits (1.2%). While differences in view counts were not statistically significant (p=0.182), TikToks with only critique showed significantly higher engagement in likes (p=0.0069), shares (p=0.0028), and comments (p=0.0012) compared to those with only promotion.

“Contrary to claims that TikTok is rife with sunscreen misinformation, our findings indicate that such content constitutes a small portion of the most viewed videos. However, these critique-focused TikToks, despite being few, consistently generated significantly more audience interaction,” the authors write.

They say this finding suggests that critical or contrarian content may attract disproportionate attention even when not widely represented. Overall, the dominant narrative on TikTok promotes sunscreen use, and widespread misinformation does not appear prevalent among the platform’s most visible content.