A D.C. doctor is sounding the alarm about an uptick in unintended pregnancies among some young women who’ve ditched hormonal birth control and contraception for alternative options.
Some health care workers are pointing to the rapid spread of misinformation on popular social media sites as an influencing factor.
“What I have seen in my practice and across the country is many people are going to social media instead of their physicians to talk about these things,” said Michael Belmonte, a D.C.-based OB/GYN and clinical expert on family planning at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). “It’s certainly leading to unintended pregnancies, a lack of treatment of reproductive medical conditions and a larger mistrust in medicine and science.”
Doctors are reporting the correlation based on anecdotes, but there is little data available on the possibility that women are being influenced by social media disinformation to quit taking birth control.
Belmonte said the falsehoods target younger women, who tend to trust the myths and spend more time on social media.
“I find myself on social media looking at these myths myself to get ahead of these trends to really understand what my patients are hearing,” Belmonte told WTOP. “Nothing really surprises me anymore.”
Belmonte said he believes some of his patients turn to social media for reproductive information because they may feel anxious about the topic or ignored by health care providers. It’s also difficult for younger patients to decipher fact from fiction on social media, he said.
“We are being fully inundated by stories in various forms throughout our day. It can be really difficult to understand who is an expert in this,” Belmonte told WTOP. “I have no qualms with someone wanting to believe what is being presented to them. Unfortunately, there are bad actors in this space.”
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What Belmonte calls false information includes side effects linked to hormonal birth control that he said has been debunked, such as quick weight gain, uncontrollable mood swings and a permanent loss of fertility.
Ali Gannon, a reproductive endocrinologist at Shady Grove Fertility in Fairfax, Virginia, agreed, saying hormonal birth control pills have no negative impact on fertility, and that many patients who experience common side effects, like nausea, headaches and breast tenderness, can change the form of birth control their doctors prescribe.
“There are so many different types available on the market now,” Gannon said. “There are other options out there.”
Some of the content on social media seems to be designed to spur women into discarding hormonal birth control and switch to other alternatives.
It works for some women, but not all, Belmonte said. He believes the most effective way to sort out what’s what and maintain an accurate knowledge is to discuss the topic during a doctor’s visit.
“My goal is to be an educator,” he said. “We talk about what the ‘true’ facts are and the ‘true’ side effects. That allows the patient and me to start on the same page and figure out what is best for them.”