ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Health Communication
Between Likes and Lies: How Teenage Girls Navigate Online Health Information
Provisionally accepted
Hyunjin Seo1*
K. Macy Burkett1Olga Morales1Nazra Izhar1
Rim Hayat Chaif1Michaella Barros Coelho1Huong Ha2Blessing Jona1Azhar Iqbal1Taylor Doyle1- 1University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States
- 2University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
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Abstract: This study conducted a survey of high school teenage girls in the United States to examine how they navigate and evaluate health information on social media, as well as the barriers they face in accessing and interpreting such content. Our findings highlight three key challenges teenage girls face in navigating health information online: information overload, conflicting messages, and risks associated with misinformation. This research also shows that factors such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, and household socioeconomic status influence teenage girls’ social media use and digital information competence, which in turn affect how they access online health misinformation. This study fills an important gap in research by providing empirical insights into how teenage girls evaluate beauty and health information on social media. It contributes to health communication studies by showing how digital health information environments both reinforce and complicate longstanding gendered dynamics related to health, idealized body standards, and equitable access to information. This research also offers practical implications for enhancing digital health literacy among teenage girls through targeted programs and informed guidance for educators, policymakers, and caregivers.
Keywords: Online health information, Information assessment, teenage girls, digital health literacy, Social Media
Received: 25 Aug 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Seo, Burkett, Morales, Izhar, Chaif, Coelho, Ha, Jona, Iqbal and Doyle. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hyunjin Seo, hseo@ku.edu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.