Short Wave

Do Birth Control Side Effects Make It Worth Skipping?

November 10, 2025

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  • A significant portion of adults under 35 trust social media influencers over physicians for health advice, leading to the spread of misinformation regarding hormonal birth control. 
  • Health influencers often highlight rare or extreme side effects of hormonal birth control without providing necessary context or statistics, leading to fear and distrust among users. 
  • Doctors emphasize that personalized medical advice from a trained professional is crucial for weighing the risks of hormonal birth control against the significant societal and physical risks associated with unplanned pregnancy. 

Segments

Influencers Impacting Healthcare
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(00:00:22)
  • Key Takeaway: 38% of surveyed young adults trust social media over physicians for health information.
  • Summary: Health influencers are having a pervasive effect on healthcare, particularly among adults under 35. A global survey indicated that 38% of these respondents trust social media more than a real physician. Many influencers lack medical degrees and promote unproven wellness strategies and treatments.
Hormonal Birth Control Misinformation
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(00:01:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Claims about hormonal birth control causing personality changes are manufactured, while others are inaccurately represented.
  • Summary: Influencers frequently focus on perceived dangerous side effects of hormonal birth control, such as gut biome destruction, weight gain, and loss of sex drive. Hormonal birth control is supported by significant research showing it is safe and highly effective for most people. One study found over half of analyzed TikTok contraception videos rejected hormonal birth control.
Prevalence of Misinformation
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(00:04:10)
  • Key Takeaway: Only 10% of popular birth control videos on TikTok were created by medical professionals.
  • Summary: A study analyzing 100 popular birth control videos on TikTok found that only 10% were created by actual medical professionals, indicating a prominent prevalence of misinformation. This misinformation impacts doctor’s offices, where patients bring up conspiracy-minded approaches to contraception. Doctors must actively disabuse patients of inaccurate information heard online.
Contextualizing Rare Side Effects
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(00:06:20)
  • Key Takeaway: Uterine perforation from an IUD, though severe, is a rare complication occurring in about one in a thousand cases.
  • Summary: Patients often bring up horror stories about incredibly rare side effects, such as uterine perforation from an IUD, which requires surgical removal. While uterine perforation is a real complication, it is very rare (about one in a thousand) and often treatable with a brief procedure. Social media posters are not obligated to represent the low probability of these events occurring.
Importance of Professional Consultation
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(00:08:27)
  • Key Takeaway: Human medical professionals provide personalized examination and context that AI or online sources cannot replicate.
  • Summary: The primary advice from doctors is to have conversations with trained medical professionals, not influencers or AI, for personalized care. Human doctors can account for individual factors, such as existing health conditions that might change the odds of rare complications like blood clots. A true back and forth exchange of information is necessary to determine the best birth control for an individual body.
Weighing Pregnancy Risk
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(00:10:39)
  • Key Takeaway: The major side effect of not using birth control is unplanned pregnancy, which carries a societal tax on women’s independence.
  • Summary: Doctors can generally inform patients about the likelihood of side effects (common, uncommon, extremely rare) which must be weighed against the odds of pregnancy. Avoiding pregnancy allows women to be equal players in modern life, as parenthood still imposes a societal tax, including lower earnings and more unpaid labor. The critique of birth control often fails to account for the risks of unwanted pregnancy.