Side effects—both anticipated and experienced—are a significant influence on contraceptive decision-making, particularly for hormonal methods. In our ongoing, large-scale study of contraceptive information on TikTok, we found that nearly two-thirds of TikToks in our dataset shared lived experiences with contraceptive use and often focused on side effects—largely making claims about users’ individual experiences and not explicitly indicating such claims were generalizable. Regardless of whether experts would classify the claims as misinformation and regardless of the intent of the creators, individuals may consume lived experience narratives about side effects as factual and generalizable. Therefore, the content becomes misinformation through the consumption process. That is, as individuals take this information into account in their own experiential knowledge of contraception, they may see it as “truth” on par with or weighed as more credible than evidence-based sources.

Building on our ongoing research, this qualitative study focuses on how 18-21-year-olds assigned female sex at birth make sense of narratives of personal experiences of contraceptive side effects of hormonal methods to better understand the process of these narratives becoming misinformation. This project aims to understand how young people: (1) interpret narratives about experiences of side effects of hormonal contraceptive methods and the extent to which they perceive these narratives as factual and generalizable; (2) translate their interpretation of these narratives to their own experiential knowledge base and contraceptive decision-making; and (3) weigh these personal narratives compared to other types of information (e.g., empirical data) and information sources (e.g., healthcare providers).