Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception — which includes birth-control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) — is safe and effective, they worry the profession’s long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects has left many patients seeking information from unqualified online communities.

  • someguy3
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    4 months ago

    Hasn’t this been a long standing thing? Woman online will say birth control screws with them, which doesn’t line up with official data.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      4 months ago

      It does have some very real side effects, and it does have some quite rare ones which are incredibly dangerous. But being pregnant has much worse side effects and a much much higher risk of lethality.

      The big difference is that it’s actually keeping people off birth control rather than shifting women to the minipill if they actually have problems.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yeah my ex almost died from her birth control when her incompetent doctor neglected to do the blood tests he was supposed to do while she was on it and had made up his mind that she was full of shit before she even came to him about blacking out randomly and coming to in weird places or her organs slowly shutting down. And when a different doctor made the connection, her main doctor still wanted her to finish her current course, even though it was killing her.