The Truth About the Birth Control Misinformation Flooding Social Media

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If you are a hormonal birth control user, you might have noticed nightmare fuel spilling into your TikTok algorithm recently: Influencers telling you that the pill has permanently altered your body composition, your significant other broke up with you because the pill caused changes in your personality, or simply that you are putting literal poison into your body.

These content creators — who often describe themselves as “holistic health” influencers — are urging their viewers to stop taking the pill and switch to non-hormonal alternatives. Often, these videos are means of promoting and selling e-books and webinars with information about “fertility awareness” — a contraception method, the effectiveness of which can vary greatly, that involves abstaining from sex during the ovulation phase of your menstrual cycle.

Gynecologists want young people to know that these claims dismissing the pill as dangerous are not true — and reproductive justice advocates warn that this rhetoric could be part of a broader conservative effort to dissuade women from fully exploring their contraception options.

Jade Hurley, the communications manager for the DC Abortion Fund, first noticed these claims popping up on her social media feeds in 2022, shortly after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

At first, Hurley thought the trend might have been sparked by a good-faith effort among content creators to spotlight patients who experience side effects on the pill — an issue that she said she and other reproductive justice organizers have been asking questions about for years.

“I cannot believe that something that is so important for the health and autonomy of so many women also causes these side effects,” Hurley said. “Why is this happening? Who is behind this? How can we make this better?”

However, Hurley quickly realized that these influencers were instead pushing for “a complete write-off of (the pill) as a resource and an option,” likening it to a toxin.

According to Tamika Auguste, MD FACOG, OBGYN and the chair of Women’s and Infant Services at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, the first thing to know is that “birth control pills are not toxic.”

“If they were toxic, we would not be prescribing them,” she said.

The truth about birth control misinformation

The pill is both a highly effective form of pregnancy prevention and a medication used to treat a number of other health conditions, including endometriosis and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

“I've always thought that these drugs should be called hormonal preparations or hormonal drugs rather than birth control or oral contraceptives because they're used so widely for all kinds of … problems,” said Mary Lou Ballweg, the ​​founder, president and executive director of the Endometriosis Association.

Not only is it largely safe, the pill will not fundamentally change the shape of your body, according to Dr. Auguste. She said it’s typical for patients to gain an average of five to eight pounds of “water weight” while on the pill, but it’s not cause for concern.

“There’s no evidence to show that it changes body form or proportion,” she said, adding that teens who start the pill shortly after they get their first period can usually attribute any changes in how their clothes fit to puberty, not the pill.

As for claims that birth control can change a person’s personality — perhaps so significantly that they get dumped — Dr. Auguste said it’s important to keep in mind that “a mood change is very different than a personality change.”

She said some women do notice mood changes while on the pill, noting that this might manifest in feelings of anxiety or depression, similar to Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), which can happen regardless of whether somebody is taking hormonal birth control.

“It is sometimes that they just need an adjustment of the pill with a lower dose of estrogen or progesterone, and then that is fixed,” Dr. Auguste said. “Sometimes [patients] don't like their mood on the pill and then the pill is not a good option for them, and there are other types of birth control that would be better for them.”

On the other hand, Dr. Auguste said that some patients find the pill helps regulate their PMS mood swings.

Another misconception circulating online is that the pill can cause infertility down the road, a claim that Dr. Auguste called “categorically false.”

If you stop taking the pill, your fertility levels will bounce right back “to whatever it otherwise would have been,” according to Jill Edwardson, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Johns Hopkins University. The only hormonal contraceptive that doesn’t work that way is the injection, she said. After you stop a method like Depo Provera, your cycle will still return to its baseline, you can just expect it to take some time. According to Planned Parenthood, it can take as long as 10 months.

Dr. Edwardson also said, although “there’s some data that suggests that there may be an increased risk of breast cancer in those who’ve used hormonal contraception in the past,” it’s a very low likelihood. In fact, she said more developed research shows a decreased risk of both uterine and ovarian cancers among people who take the pill.

“Like with anything, it's thinking about risks and benefits,” she said.

Even though the pill is safe to take, patients can have different experiences and preferences. That’s why Dr. Edwardson said she understands how easy it can be to believe misinformation about the birth control pill.

“Things are presented in a very black-and-white manner, and these are really personal decisions and they do affect people in different ways,” she said.

Dr. Auguste has had patients ask her about claims made about the pill on social media — and, as long as patients have questions, she hopes they keep an open dialogue with their health care providers.

“That’s what I want. I want someone to say, ‘I heard this on social media. Is this true?’” she said. “Let's have a conversation about it. Let's talk about it. Let me give you the evidence, and then you can make your decision.”

And, unlike social media influencers selling products, Dr. Auguste said laws like the Sunshine Act are in place to prevent doctors from profiting off of prescribing the pill — they’re not getting any “kickbacks” from manufacturers.

“That is taken off the table,” she said. “We are giving you the facts.”

Where’s this misinformation stemming from?

Reproductive justice workers are concerned that this trend is more than just a cash-grab among content creators, according to Hurley. These influencers are pushing a message to “be clean, be optimized and be as perfect an example of femininity as you can be,” Hurley said – values that are reminiscent of the “tradwife” movement and other far-right ideas about gender.

“The fundamental thing that these antis want to get rid of are not birth control pills, it’s not even abortion,” Hurley said. “They want to get rid of our autonomy and our ability to choose the direction of our own lives.”

Whether this seeming increase in misinformation is directly tied to the right’s anti-abortion efforts is unclear, but The Washington Post reports that it coincides with an alarming rise of medical misinformation overall, which has become caught up in political debates after the COVID-19 pandemic. And, sometimes these anti-birth control messages are coming straight from far-right figures, according to NBC News, which tied this messaging to other conservative efforts like banning gender-affirming care. Beyond that, reproductive justice experts have long warned that birth control would come under attack soon after Roe was overturned.

Whether or not the appearance of these videos on social media is a concerted effort or a consequence of increasing mistrust in the medical establishment may not matter as much as the impact. Hurley worries about this misinformation reaching teens, who she said are “already, from their schools and from their communities, without information or resources,” and could otherwise benefit from recent expansions of hormonal birth control access.

“They’re teaching young women to not want something that, looking at data, has markedly improved women’s empowerment, autonomy, justice and equity,” she said.

Even though the birth control pill is not the right fit for everybody, Hurley believes teens deserve the chance to explore a variety of options without fear.

“It’s going to endanger youth access and autonomy by not giving them information and steering them away via social media fear-mongering from an entire world of resources that they just haven’t even been able to try,” she said.

The bottom line, Dr. Auguste said, is to bring any questions or concerns to a trusted healthcare provider.

“The decision for each individual patient about whether they choose hormonal or non-hormonal contraception should be made between the patient and her healthcare provider,” she said.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue