Sunscreen is overwhelmingly promoted in popular TikTok videos, but content containing health misinformation about sunscreen attracts disproportionately high audience engagement, according to a new study published June 18th in the open access journal PLOS Digital Health by Alessandro Marcon of the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues.
Skin cancer rates are rising globally, and sunscreen is among the most accessible and effective tools for prevention. However, public health organizations have raised concerns about a trend of sunscreen misinformation on TikTok—one of the world's most-used social media platforms, especially among young people—including claims that sunscreen is toxic, cancer-causing, or unnecessarily blocks the health benefits of sun exposure.
In the new study, researchers conducted a content analysis of 971 of the most-viewed TikTok videos across the five most popular sunscreen-related hashtags (#sunscreen, #sunscreenviral, #spf, #sunscreenreview, and #sunprotection). Videos were coded for sunscreen promotion, health-related critique, and audience engagement metrics including views, likes, shares, and comments.
The vast majority of videos included in the study promoted sunscreen use (86.8%), with only 6% containing health-related critique such as claims that sunscreen causes harm (1.5%) or prevents health benefits such as vitamin D absorption (1.2%). Despite that small fraction, critique-focused videos generated, on average, significantly higher audience engagement in likes (p=0.0069), shares (p=0.0028), and comments (p=0.0012) compared with promotion-only videos, a pattern the researchers attribute to the outsized viral potential of contrarian and shock-provoking content. Notably, even the promotional majority represented a missed public health opportunity: sunscreen content on TikTok was heavily focused on cosmetic benefits and product promotion, with only 6% of videos explicitly mentioning cancer risk reduction.
"Sunscreen misinformation may attract disproportionate attention," the authors say. "Sunscreen misinformation on TikTok constitutes an area of concern not for the total sum of overarching influence in terms of content production but rather in how strongly some sunscreen misinformation ideas resonated among particular audiences."
The authors note, "Our analysis showed TikTok is not necessarily flooded with sunscreen misinformation, but TikToks which dangerously claim that sunscreen is harmful or unnecessary receive comparatively high levels of audience engagement. TikTok content creators commonly promoted sunscreen as part of skincare regimens where sunscreen benefits were more commonly related to beauty rather than health."
The authors add: "It was surprising to see so many TikToks promoting sunscreen use without specifically mentioning the important role it plays in cancer prevention. Only 6% of the TikToks analyzed explicitly mentioned the benefits of reducing the risk of skin cancer."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Digital Health: https://plos.io/3Smhhan
Citation: Marcon A, Zenone M, Boniface V, Peters CE, Caufield T (2026) Sunscreen is overwhelmingly promoted on TikTok, but content with misinformation exhibits proportionally high levels of audience interaction. PLOS Digit Health 5(6): e0001440. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0001440
Author countries: Canada
Funding: CEP and TC acknowledge funding support from the Canadian Cancer Society Challenge Grant [#708169]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
