Evaluation of social media videos on weight-loss surgery and GLP-1 agonists: a content quality and reliability analysis

Subin Lee; Nisha Narula; Monika Weglarz; Jenny Lee; Danbee Kim

doi:10.1007/s00464-025-11938-4

Evaluation of social media videos on weight-loss surgery and GLP-1 agonists: a content quality and reliability analysis

Surg Endosc. 2025 Sep;39(9):6032-6036. doi: 10.1007/s00464-025-11938-4. Epub 2025 Jul 9.

Authors

Subin Lee¹, Nisha Narula¹, Monika Weglarz², Jenny Lee¹, Danbee Kim³

Affiliations

¹ Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Department of Surgery, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, NJ, 07103, USA.
² Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA.
³ Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Department of Surgery, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, NJ, 07103, USA. dhk84@njms.rutgers.edu.

Abstract

Background: Social media platforms have become a leading arena for disseminating health knowledge. Information on weight loss is no exception; health, fitness and nutrition are within the 5 most searched categories in 2023. Our study investigates the quality of information on TikTok and Instagram regarding the two most popular weight loss treatments: glucagon-like-peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist and sleeve gastrectomy.

Methods: TikTok and Instagram were queried for contents about GLP-1 agonists or sleeve gastrectomy. The first 50 videos from each category were evaluated by two reviewers. The videos were divided into four categories: Instagram GLP-1, Instagram weight loss surgery (WLS), TikTok GLP-1, and TikTok WLS. The quality of the contents was assessed using the DISCERN score.

Results: 200 videos were collected for analysis. 31.5% were created by medical professionals and 68.5% were from non-medical professionals. More videos from Instagram regarding GLP-1 agonists followed by videos from TikTok regarding GLP-1 agonists were made by medical professionals compared to videos about surgery (p = 0.038). The average number of likes overall was 67,024 and saves or shares 6,305. The greatest number of likes were in the TikTok surgery group (p = 0.004) and the most saves or shares were in the Instagram surgery group (p < 0.001). DISCERN scores were low for all four categories, overall 28.0 out of 80. They were highest in the Instagram GLP-1 agonist group (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Despite the popularity of TikTok and Instagram, the quality of the health contents, as measured by DISCERN score, on these platforms remains poor. Most are created by non-medical professionals. Healthcare professionals should encourage patients to remain vigilant and educate them on misinformation on social media. This may also represent an opportunity for healthcare providers to generate their own social media content to ensure reliability of information as well as to direct patients to reliable social media content.

Keywords: Bariatric surgery; GLP-1; Obesity; Sleeve gastrectomy; Social media.

MeSH terms

Bariatric Surgery*
Gastrectomy*
Glucagon-Like Peptide 1* / agonists
Humans
Information Dissemination* / methods
Reproducibility of Results
Social Media* / standards
Video Recording* / standards
Weight Loss

Substances

Glucagon-Like Peptide 1