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If you have ever saved a workout video, believed a transformation photo, or bought a supplement because a fit stranger on your feed swore by it, a new systematic review of physical activity misinformation gives you good reason to pause before you trust the next post. Thomas et al. (2025) synthesized 33 peer-reviewed studies, published between January 2016 and May 2025, that examined how misleading exercise information spreads on social media, and the overall picture is not flattering for the fitness corner of the internet. Video content on the biggest platforms clustered between "generally poor" and "moderate" on standardized quality scoring tools across roughly 1,900 videos, and the single Instagram study in the review found that only 2.7 percent of posts from accounts averaging more than a million followers cited any source at all (Thomas et al., 2025). If you take one idea from this article, let it be this: popularity is not evidence. A large following means an account is entertaining or relatable, not that its advice is accurate.
A systematic review is a study of studies. Rather than running a new experiment, researchers collect every study that meets strict criteria, screen them, and synthesize the results, which makes this one of the stronger forms of evidence you can read. Thomas and colleagues (2025) followed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) 2020 reporting guidelines, registered their analysis plan before starting, and searched four research databases, PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Scopus, for peer-reviewed studies on physical activity misinformation. That search surfaced 9,039 records, which the team narrowed to 168 for full-text review and finally to 33 studies for the synthesis (Thomas et al., 2025).
Most of those studies, 15 of 33, examined the quality and accuracy of physical rehabilitation and therapeutic exercise recommendations, the kind of content that surfaces when you search for exercises for knee pain or a sore shoulder. The rest covered general exercise messaging, exercising with a specific condition, women's health, exercise testing, and a few smaller topics. YouTube was the most studied platform, with 13 studies evaluating 1,060 videos, followed by TikTok with 7 studies and 1,046 videos, plus single studies of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest (Thomas et al., 2025).
Two scoring tools appear throughout this research. The Global Quality Score (GQS) rates the educational quality of online health content from 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent), and DISCERN judges the quality of consumer health information on a 16-to-75 scale where 63 to 75 indicates excellent (Thomas et al., 2025). Twelve studies using the GQS reported mean or median scores between 2 (generally poor) and 3 (moderate) across 818 videos, and ten studies using DISCERN or a modified version scored another 1,080 videos, with results the study authors describe as ranging from very poor to fair (Thomas et al., 2025). Add the two together and roughly 1,900 scored videos cluster between generally poor and moderate.
It should be noted that a low score does not always mean a video is dangerous. Often it means the video is incomplete, with no safety caveats, no source, and no guidance on who the advice does not apply to. For a beginner, missing information is its own problem, because you cannot tell which parts are safe to follow.
Probably the most striking number in the review comes from its only Instagram study. Marocolo et al. (2021) analyzed 495 posts from 33 of the most prominent Brazilian exercise and health accounts, which averaged more than 1.1 million followers, and found that only about 2.7 percent of the posts, 13 in total, cited any reference supporting the information. The average quality rating across those posts was under 39 percent. These were Brazilian accounts, so this is one platform in one country, but the pattern will feel familiar to anyone who scrolls fitness content anywhere.
That same study contains a second finding that deserves more attention than it usually gets. The researchers tested whether follower counts lined up with the influencers' educational qualifications and found the opposite of what most people assume. Follower count was inversely correlated with educational qualification (r = -0.450, p = 0.009), so the accounts with the largest audiences tended to have less formally qualified people behind them, and follower count was not related to post quality in either direction (Marocolo et al., 2021).
Several studies in the review went further and tested whether popularity tracks with quality, and several found no correlation or even a negative one, so more-viewed content was sometimes lower in quality (Thomas et al., 2025). That is a clean, citable rebuttal to reading follower counts as a stand-in for trustworthiness, and it lines up with research outside of fitness. Vosoughi et al. (2018) analyzed roughly 126,000 news stories shared on Twitter and found that falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, and more broadly than the truth, and that humans, not bots, were doing the spreading.
There is nuance here, because misleading content does not always win. One study in the review found that misleading YouTube videos about breast cancer rehabilitation exercises were common, 51.2 percent of those analyzed, but drew only 25.7 percent of total views, while useful videos attracted the rest (Thomas et al., 2025). The overall conclusion still stands, though. You cannot count on views, likes, or follower numbers to sort accurate advice from inaccurate advice.
Only 2 of the 33 studies, about 6 percent, examined weight-loss misinformation, even though the authors describe weight loss as a topic of high public interest with a long history of pseudoscience and false claims (Thomas et al., 2025). One of those two studies analyzed 234 belly-fat-loss pins on Pinterest and found significant missing information in 100 percent of them, apparently retouched photos in 25.6 percent, and before-and-after images that were not attainable within the stated time frame in 11.5 percent (Dedrick et al., 2020, as cited in Thomas et al., 2025). A more recent study found that 57 percent of TikTok creators recommended syncing exercise to the menstrual cycle, a practice the scientific literature has not reached consensus on (Pfender et al., 2025, as cited in Thomas et al., 2025). The gap between what people search for and what researchers have actually measured is one more reason to treat your feed as entertainment first rather than as a library of verified advice.
The practical takeaway is not that every fitness creator is wrong. Many publish helpful, responsible information, and the review itself notes that social media can provide valuable information. The takeaway is that the feed has no quality filter, so the filter has to be you, and that matters because the problem is serious enough that the US surgeon general issued a national advisory on health misinformation in 2021 (Thomas et al., 2025). Checking whether a claim comes with a source takes about ten seconds, and it would have screened out roughly 97 percent of the Instagram posts in the Marocolo et al. (2021) study. That one habit, plus a healthy suspicion of anything promising dramatic results fast, puts you ahead of almost everyone scrolling beside you. It is also the exact skill our free Truth in Fitness Marketing mini-course was built to teach, and I will point you there in a moment.
This research is a big part of why our learning path exists. The free Truth in Fitness Marketing mini-course takes about an hour and walks you through how misleading fitness claims are actually constructed, from layered truths and transformation-photo gaps to credential mismatches and survivorship bias, then gives you a five-question framework you can apply to the next claim in your feed. If you want the same skill applied to the supplement aisle and the peptide craze, the free Truth in Fitness bundle stacks three mini-courses, 16 lessons, and guided case studies into one path that teaches a single skill at increasing difficulty. And when you want the full foundation, our flagship Innova Vita Fitness Health and Wellness Foundations course covers nutrition, exercise, weight management, chronic disease prevention, and an entire module on spotting health misinformation and using AI tools for health research, with self-paced, lifetime access. Every mini-course is free, and finishing one unlocks 20 percent off the flagship course.
Here are five ways to act on this research, ordered from the smallest habit to the biggest change.
Check whether a post names a source before you save, share, or buy. In the study of top Instagram accounts, only 2.7 percent of posts cited any supporting reference (Marocolo et al., 2021), so a cited source is genuinely rare and worth rewarding with your attention. When a post makes a specific claim, look for a study link, a named journal, or a credential that matches the claim. Easier alternative: if there is no source, treat the post as entertainment rather than instruction.
Treat follower count as a measure of popularity, not proof. Follower count had no relationship with post quality and was inversely correlated with educational qualification in the one study that checked (Marocolo et al., 2021). A million followers means the algorithm favors the content, not that a qualified expert made it. Easier alternative: before following a new account, spend two minutes confirming that the person's background matches the topic they post about.
Run big claims through a short list of questions. You do not need a science degree for this, and two questions cover most situations: what is the evidence behind this claim, and who profits if I believe it? Our free mini-course closes with a five-question framework that adds questions about credentials, missing context, and what a claim leaves out, which is a good next step once the two-question habit sticks. Easier alternative: keep just the two questions and build from there.
Be more skeptical of weight-loss content than any other category. Weight loss is the most searched and least studied topic in this research (Thomas et al., 2025), and the Pinterest analysis found missing information in every single pin examined (Dedrick et al., 2020, as cited in Thomas et al., 2025). A plan promising visible results in a few weeks is a marketing signal more than a science signal. Easier alternative: for personal weight decisions, talk with a doctor or a registered dietitian rather than your feed.
Favor sources that show their work. The review's authors recommend better messaging, detailed debunking, and high-quality information from trusted institutions as ways to counter misinformation (Thomas et al., 2025), and you can support that ecosystem by reading sources that cite studies, name their limitations, and update when the evidence changes. Easier alternative: start with plain-English research reviews, like the ones in our Learning Center, where the citations come included.
Correlation — a statistical measure of how strongly two things move together, ranging from -1 (opposite directions) to +1 (together); a value near 0 means no consistent relationship.
DISCERN — a checklist instrument for judging the quality of written consumer health information, scored from 16 (very poor) to 75 (excellent).
Global Quality Score (GQS) — a five-point scale for rating the educational quality of online health content, from 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent).
Infodemiology — the field that studies how health information and misinformation spread online, which is also the name of the journal that published this review.
Misinformation — inaccurate or misleading information shared without any intent to deceive, unlike disinformation, which is shared knowingly.
Peer-reviewed — describing research that independent experts in the same field evaluated and approved before it was published.
Physical activity — any body movement that burns energy, from walking and chores to structured workouts.
p-value — a number that estimates how likely a study result would be if nothing real were going on; smaller values, commonly under 0.05, suggest the result is unlikely to be chance.
PRISMA — reporting guidelines (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) that document how a systematic review was conducted.
Pseudoscience — claims dressed up in scientific language but lacking the methods, evidence, or testability of real science.
Systematic review — a study of studies, where researchers collect, screen, and synthesize all research meeting pre-set criteria on a question.
Therapeutic exercise — exercise prescribed to treat, manage, or rehabilitate a specific condition or injury.
Thomas, D. D., Xu, L., Yu, B., Alanis, O., Adamek, J., Canton, I., Lin, X., Luo, Y., & Mullen, S. P. (2025). Physical activity misinformation on social media: Systematic review. JMIR Infodemiology, 5, e62760. https://infodemiology.jmir.org/2025/1/e62760
Additional sources cited:
Marocolo, M., Meireles, A., de Souza, H. L. R., Mota, G. R., Oranchuk, D. J., Arriel, R. A., & Leite, L. H. R. (2021). Is social media spreading misinformation on exercise and health in Brazil? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(22), 11914. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182211914
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
Chris Bigelow holds a master’s degree in kinesiology from A.T. Still University and has taught kinesiology and exercise science at Bryan University for more than 10 years. He founded Innova Vita Fitness to make evidence-based health, fitness and research education more accessible to adult learners. His work focuses on exercise science, health literacy, sustainable behavior change and helping beginners evaluate health information more confidently.
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