Is YouTube a Reliable Source of Health-Related Information? A Systematic Review 

Abstract

Background: You Tube is a valuable source of health-related educational material which can have a profound impact on people's health-related behaviors and decisions. However, YouTube contains a wide variety of unverified content that may promote unhealthy behaviors and activities. We aim in this systematic review to provide insight into the published literature concerning the quality of health information and educational videos found on YouTube.Methods: A search of peer-reviewed original articles was conducted regarding the educational value of YouTube medical videos which were published in English. We searched Google Scholar, Medline (through PubMed), EMBASE, Scopus, Direct Science, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases. A literature search was conducted between April 1 and April 31 of 2021. Based on the eligibility criteria, 202 artilces covering 30 medical categories were included in the qualitative synthesis.Results: We reviewed approximately 22,300 videos in all of the studies we reviewed, with a mean of 115 videos per paper, which were assessed by 2.6 assessors. The quality of the videos was rated based on either scores or categories. Researchers commonly employed scoring systems that were either standardized (e.g., GQS, DISCERN, and JAMA) or based upon the guidelines and recommendations of professional associations. The results using different scores indicated an average to below-average quality. According to our aggregate quality assessment data, most of the videos were of poor quality. In terms of bias, only 32% of the videos appear neutral toward the health content, indicating that bias occurs frequently in these videos. Furthermore, the majority of the studies found a negative correlation between the quality and popularity of the videos.Conclusions: YouTube is currently a poor to average source of health information. Furthermore, YouTube metrics are indeed tricky and can be misleading when determining the quality of videos. The future solution should be to implement ranking filtering algorithms that consider experts' endorsements, peer-review, and other metrics that can push up endorsed videos in the search results.

YouTube and Education: A Scoping Review

“…Finding appropriate content on social media is a general challenge [210]- [212]. This task is complicated by the huge offer of content, the popularity-biased ranking by search and recommendation systems [6], [213], and the difficulty to assess content coverage or quality with-out watching the video. Some professional YouTubers provide descriptions for their videos but it is not clear whether learners make use of these descriptions before they decide to watch.…”

COVID-19 Information on YouTube: Analysis of Quality and Reliability of Videos in Eleven Widely Spoken Languages across Africa

“…A systematic review by Osman et al of 202 articles assessing 22,300 health-related YouTube videos found that about 41% of health-related content objectively assessed using standard scoring systems across a wide range of medical specialties was reported to be inaccurate or "not useful" while only about 19% of such content was categorized as useful, with more than half refecting commercial interests [16]. Te same study also revealed that 44% of articles highlighted the role of verifed health sources in promoting reliable information on YouTube with 11% discouraging the use of YouTube as a platform for promoting actionable health-related content.…”

Will artificial intelligence help us in predicting outcomes in cardiac surgery?

“…If one understands that, according to social media management platforms, people globally watch over one billion hours of YouTube videos every day—we speak about two billion people—, 14 it is easy to understand that the low numbers, as well discussed by Penny‐Dimri et al 11 are a fundamental limitation of ML methods in predicting outcomes in cardiac surgery now. Of course, using YouTube as a reference or comparator is a silly approach for different reasons; the first and most important is that YouTube is not a reliable source of medical‐related information as appropriately documented by Osman et al 15 …”