Only 25% of U.S. Longevity Influencers’ Health Advice Posts Can Be Considered Trustworthy, Researchers Find

To better understand the prevalence of unreliable health information on social media and help users discern fact from fiction, the WellnessPulse Research team analyzed 200 Instagram posts from leading longevity influencers in the U.S.

The findings were striking: only 25% of the posts were deemed trustworthy, a mere 20% contained accurate scientific information, and a staggering 75% lacked proper references.

This is concerning since a recent survey found that about one in four (24%) U.S. adults use social media at least weekly to find health information and advice.

In the WellnessPulse analysis, the content is considered trustworthy when it meets the following criteria: it demonstrates scientific accuracy by interpreting health-related information or guidelines clearly and avoiding exaggerated claims (e.g., ‘miracle cure’ or ‘instant results’). It also offers a balanced scientific explanation without oversimplifying complex topics and provides non-harmful advice that avoids unsafe or extreme practices.

Additionally, it provides relevant, credible references (e.g., scientific studies, regulatory guidelines), clearly states the source of information (e.g., personal experience, opinion, or scientific evidence), discloses any promotional intent, and presents health-related information in a neutral and balanced way without emotional appeals.

Posts scoring 6 points or more (out of 8) based on these criteria are classified as likely trustworthy, while those scoring 3 points or less are considered likely untrustworthy, and scores in between are considered of uncertain trustworthiness. Promotional content is separately evaluated to determine if it influences trustworthiness.

Read the full methodology here.

How trustworthy are these posts?

After analyzing 200 different Instagram posts from top longevity influencers using the defined scoring system, the posts were separated into three categories based on the number of points they earned: likely trustworthy, likely untrustworthy, and uncertain trustworthiness.

The graph below shows the distribution of trustworthiness levels across all analyzed Instagram posts.

Based on the analysis, only approximately a quarter of the health-related Instagram posts from longevity influencers were found to be likely trustworthy.

• 24.5% (49 out of 200) of analyzed posts were evaluated as likely trustworthy.
• 36% (72 out of 200) of analyzed posts were evaluated as likely untrustworthy.
• 39.5% (79 out of 200) of analyzed posts were evaluated as being of uncertain trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness, by criteria

To determine the level of trustworthiness of each post, we analyzed each of them using 8 different criteria. Below is a graph illustrating the results of the evaluations in each specific criterion.

Following an analysis of whether the posts included relevant resources to back up their information, such as scientific studies or regulatory guidelines, the results showed that a total of 74.5 %, 149 out of 200 posts, did not. Only 3.5%, 7 out of 200 posts, did. These results suggest that the majority of the content analyzed did not have clearly indicated references to support the health-related information provided. Of all the criteria, this one was also met the least number of times, showing that the inclusion of relevant resources is severely lacking when it comes to social media health advice.

In the ‘clear source of information’ criterion, which analyzed whether posts indicated if the information provided was based on personal experience, opinion, or scientific evidence, roughly a quarter — or 25.5% — of posts did indicate this, while 43% did not. Another 31.5% received an evaluation of ‘uncertain’ in this category. This shows that the majority of posts do not clearly indicate where the information is coming from.

In the ‘promotional intent disclosed’ criterion, 74%, 148 out of 200, across all analyzed Instagram posts were found to be uncertain in terms of whether they clearly disclosed promotional intent. These results demonstrate that the majority of the content analyzed (74%) can be considered uncertain in terms of promotional intent disclosure.

In the criterion of ‘neutral communication,’ meaning the content is disseminated without bias or emotion, 53% of posts fell into this category. Another 21% did not, while 26% prompted a result of ‘uncertain.’ This means that just over half of the evaluated posts used neutral communication when sharing information.

The next criterion evaluated whether the posts contained ‘accurate scientific information’ and found that only 19.5% did. Another 16% did not, while the majority — 64.5% — received an ‘uncertain’ result. According to these results, the majority of health posts from longevity influencers do not fully meet the criterion of accurate scientific information.

We also evaluated whether the posts avoided exaggerated claims. The results showed that 50.5% of posts did avoid making these claims, while 20.5% did not. Another 29% resulted in a response of ‘uncertain.’ This means that only half of the posts evaluated explicitly avoided using exaggerated claims to describe the alleged impacts of the health advice they were offering.

When it came to the criterion of a ‘balanced scientific explanation,’ 25% of posts did include one, 32.5% received a did not, and 42.5% were found to be ‘uncertain,’ suggesting that only a quarter of posts clearly explained scientific topics without oversimplifying them or providing only partial explanations of their meaning.

The 'non-harmful advice' criterion was mostly met across all analyzed Instagram posts. Compared to the other evaluation criteria, the highest proportion of posts — 73.5% or 147 out of 200 — did provide non-harmful advice, while the lowest proportion, or 8.5% of posts, failed to avoid harmful advice. These results suggest that the majority of the content provides health-related information that is unlikely to cause immediate health harm — a particularly relevant and important result when it comes to the health and safety of social media users.

Promotional vs. organic: how does it affect trustworthiness?

Separately from the other criteria, an evaluation was conducted to determine how many posts could be considered promotional content compared to those considered to be organic content. The graph below shows the distribution of posts based on promotional intent (promotional vs. organic content), categorized according to defined criteria, across all analyzed Instagram posts.

According to the analysis, approximately half of the analyzed posts (45.5% or 91 out of 200 posts) were found to be promotional content. Similarly, 43.5% or 87 out of 200 posts were considered organic content. Another 11%, 22 out of 200 posts, were evaluated as being of uncertain promotional intent.

The graph below shows the distribution of promotional posts based on promotional content type, categorized according to defined criteria, across all analyzed Instagram posts.

The majority of promotional content analyzed (63.7% or 58 out of 91 posts) was self-promotion, while sponsored content constituted approximately a third of all promotional content (33% or 30 out of 91 posts). The remaining 3.3%, 3 out of 91, posts were found to be both types of promotional content.

Social media has become a full-time job and the main source of income for more and more influencers, which explains why so much of their content can be considered promotional. But, these results suggest that while many content creators may intend to provide their audiences with helpful information, they also often have ulterior motives. Whether the content is self-promotion, commercial, or both, it typically aims to sell a product or a service for profit and benefit the creator who is posting it.

After analyzing the number of posts that were promotional versus organic, the research examined whether this had much of an impact on the trustworthiness of the post. While it may seem likely that promotional posts would be far less trustworthy, the WellnessPulse analysis found that there wasn’t actually a major difference between them.

The graph below shows the distribution of trustworthiness levels across posts, categorized by their promotional intent (promotional vs. organic content).

The results show that the distribution of trustworthiness in promotional and organic content is, perhaps surprisingly, somewhat similar. The difference between the trustworthiness distribution in these two content categories is not statistically significant, as determined by the analysis. However, compared to promotional content, organic content had a slightly higher proportion of likely trustworthy posts (29.9% vs. 20.9%) and a slightly lower proportion of likely untrustworthy posts (34.5% vs. 37.4%).

While overall trustworthiness distribution did not differ significantly between promotional and organic content, there were significant differences in 4 out of 8 trustworthiness categories.

Below is a graph illustrating the distribution of trustworthiness across all criteria evaluated in the Instagram posts, categorized by their promotional intent (promotional vs. organic content).

According to our analysis, the difference in the trustworthiness distribution in promotional vs. organic content is statistically significant in four out of eight trustworthiness criteria: promotional intent disclosure, exaggerated claims avoidance, balanced scientific explanation, and providing non-harmful advice. This highlights that promotional content is less likely to contain at least some of the necessary components of a trustworthy post.

The differences in trustworthiness distribution in these four categories demonstrate that promotional content more often lacks key requirements to ensure a post is likely trustworthy. This is perhaps due to the focus placed more on selling a product or service than on clearly explaining and backing up information to ensure users have the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions about their health. For example, organic content has twice the number of posts with balanced scientific explanations compared to promotional content. This may be because providing such balanced explanations may ultimately deter users from purchasing the product or service that is being sold.

Methodology

A publicly available list of top U.S. longevity influencers was used as the initial source for this analysis. From this list, 20 influencers were randomly selected for further evaluation. The original source was not involved in this research, and the findings presented here are entirely independent and do not reflect their position or endorsement.

For each selected influencer, the WellnessPulse Research team analyzed their 10 most recent posts, including Instagram reels. In cases where 5 or more content pieces were unrelated to health, such as lifestyle content or personal moments, those influencers were removed from the analysis, and other influencers were randomly selected from the same top list to maintain the sample size of 20 influencers. Thus, researchers evaluated 200 health-related content pieces of longevity influencers on Instagram overall.

Please note that pinned posts (typically featured at the top of the influencer’s profile) were excluded from the analysis to focus solely on the most recent content that reflects current health trends or advice. Also, if any of the selected posts (from the 10 most recent) were not related to health (e.g., lifestyle content unrelated to health), they were disregarded, and the next available post was selected until 10 relevant posts were analyzed for each influencer.

The content assessment strategy focused on the trustworthiness of the health-related information provided and also estimated whether the analyzed posts were promotional or not.

In this analysis, trustworthiness refers to the extent to which health-related content is reliable, accurate, ethically presented, and generally non-harmful to the audience. It is determined by evaluating whether the content adheres to principles of transparency, scientific accuracy, and neutrality and whether it avoids exaggerated claims and potentially unsafe health advice. The more trustworthiness criteria are met, the more trustworthy the content is considered, generally making it a reliable resource for health-related information.

The research team assessed the trustworthiness of all selected posts based on the criteria summarized in the table below.

To evaluate posts in terms of promotional intent, the following questions were used:

• Is there no promotion of sponsored products or services within the content?
• Is there no promotion of personal products or self-service within the content?

The health-related content selection and analysis took place from 01/27/2025 to 02/07/2025.

Data analysis

Selected posts were evaluated for all trustworthiness criteria, with an output of three types:

• Answer ‘Yes,’ which equals 1 point and indicates a post meets a certain criterion.
• Answer ‘No,’ which equals 0 points and indicates a post does not meet a certain criterion.
• Answer ‘Uncertain,' which equals 0.5 points and is chosen in cases where the information is ambiguous or unclear to have a definitive ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer.

Points of all criteria for each post were summed to represent a trustworthiness score. Based on the results of this evaluation, each post was attributed to one of the following levels of trustworthiness:

• Likely trustworthy if a post received a trustworthiness score of ≥6 points.
• Likely untrustworthy if a post received a trustworthiness score of ≤3 points.
• Uncertain trustworthiness if a post received a trustworthiness score from 3.5 to 5.5 points.

The maximum overall score for a post is 8 points with increments of 0.5.

Also, all posts were evaluated in terms of promotional intent. Based on the results, each analyzed post was assigned to a certain type:

• Promotional content
• Organic content
• Uncertain promotional intent

Promotional posts were also analyzed to specifically identify the type of promotion, either sponsored content or self-promotion.

After summarizing the collected data and conducting the required calculations, a visual representation of the results was prepared to highlight the research findings and provide insights regarding the trustworthiness of health-related longevity content on Instagram. In addition, the chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests were used to determine whether promotional content differs significantly from organic content in terms of the distribution of overall trustworthiness or a specific category of trustworthiness.

Limitations

During the content selection, evaluation, and data analysis steps of this research project, researchers encountered certain limitations, including but not limited to:

• Since only recent posts were analyzed, the trends over time, e.g., whether content improved or worsened in scientific accuracy, were not captured.
• Some content may have been reliable from a scientific accuracy point of view but failed to provide full citations or disclaimers, for example, which may have led to not being classified as ‘likely trustworthy’ since the overall result depends on a score that includes all criteria evaluation.
• Nuanced health topics, such as longevity, inherently involve some level of uncertainty, in certain cases making it difficult to categorize health-related information as purely meeting the criteria or not.
• The chosen methodology did not account for whether misinformation was intentionally spread or whether, for example, the scientific studies were simply misinterpreted.
• Paid content and self-promotion were evaluated separately from trustworthiness criteria since promotional activities do not necessarily indicate untrustworthiness. For example, on a general stance, there might have been cases where high-quality, evidence-based health recommendations were provided, even when promoting products.

Biases

During the content selection, evaluation, and data analysis steps of this research project, researchers have encountered certain biases, including but not limited to:

Selection bias

Top longevity influencers were selected from a single ranking source, which may have biases in determining the top longevity influencers or even attributing certain influencers to the longevity field, a broad area that involves various scientific disciplines and is not always clearly defined. A random selection of 20 longevity influencers in the U.S. does not fully represent all longevity influencers on Instagram. Moreover, excluding influencers whose ≥5 recent posts were not health-related may unintentionally skew the sample toward those influencers more actively sharing health-related information, which can potentially affect the likelihood of misinformation detection.

Confirmation bias

The exclusion of pinned posts may have removed important context that could better reflect the overall nature of the content shared on longevity topics. Also, since only the first 10 posts of each selected influencer were analyzed, they may not fully represent the range of content quality or scientific rigor present across all posts. Additionally, some influencers may intentionally blend scientifically rigorous posts with less evidence-based or more engaging content. This variability can potentially make it challenging to fully capture or assess the extent of health-related misinformation, which may lead to an incomplete representation of the overall trustworthiness of the health-related information.

Interpretation bias

While certain specifications were set for assessing the potential health-related misinformation within the analyzed posts, determining what qualifies as a ‘balanced scientific explanation’ or ‘exaggerated claims’ still largely depends on the evaluator’s judgment and may be subjective. This subjectivity could potentially lead to inconsistencies during the analysis. Similarly, the assessment of ‘neutral communication’ and ‘potentially harmful health advice’ may also vary based on individual interpretations, leading to further inconsistencies.