Gen Z Influencers: The Rise of DocTubers and TikTok Doctors

Pandemics are really weird times. The world panics, gets all locked down, and the next thing you know, toilet paper is more precious than diamonds and doctors are the new influencers.

We could say that doctors are everywhere these days, and it would sound like a cheesy joke. Yet, somehow, it’s the truth, if for everywhere we intend news outlets and, especially, social media. The last few months have seen a rise in the number of doctors who took over Instagram, YouTube and TikTok to share advice, reliable info and hilarious choreographies (guess which social media got which content).

There’s no doubt that the current pandemic times have given a boost to the popularity of medical advice, yet the Doc-Influencers phenomenon wasn’t born with COVID 19. One of the pioneers, and also one of the most influential DocTubers in this period, is Dr Mikhail Varshavski, AKA Doctor Mike, a family medicine doctor from New York City. His eponymous YouTube channel was created in 2016 and, since then, he has gathered 5.6 million subscribers and more than 500 million views with his videos.

As Doctor Mike’s YouTube bio reads, “My goal is to make the field of medicine relatable, understandable, and fun!”. And that’s exactly what he’s doing, alternating highly informative videos (the latest, and among the most popular of the channel, are all about Coronavirus) to hilarious skits where he reacts to TV medical drama or responds to tricky medical questions.

Varshavski has always been a strong supporter of the democratization of medical knowledge through social media, as he believes these tools help doctors to get people where they are through valuable notions and fight the empowerment of murky figures such as natural-healers and no-vaxxers/medical conspiracy theorists. Unfortunately, those figures are already implanted in the fabric of some social networks, and Doctor Mike blames it on the untimely rise of the social media presence of real doctors: “I actually think that the lack of quality physicians on social media has led to the rise of social influencers pedaling miraculous cures and detox teas and all that,” he told the MIT Technology Review.

The fight against medical misinformation and the hope to create a closer contact with a larger audience through comprehensible and reliable information is also strong within other Doctors on YouTube. The interesting thing is that they all confront the “medical influencer” job in their own way, creating original content that is also based on scientific evidence.

Dr Mike Hansen, a pulmonologist from Fort Wayne, Indiana, is the go-to DocTuber for factual, detail-oriented videos that explain the dynamics of the Coronavirus pandemic and debunk fake news and controversial medical advice. Hansen is gradually addressing a large majority of concerns connected to Coronavirus, from ventilators to blood clots, to the consumption of vitamins to fight it. Even if they can be highly specific, his videos are still understandable by anyone, also thanks to his calm, unfazed tone of voice.

Another way of recounting Coronavirus times from a medical practitioner’s perspective is from the trenches: hospitals. That’s what Dr Ed Hope, Emergency Medicine Doctor and Teaching Fellow in the UK, is doing. On his Dr Hope Sick’s Notes YouTube channel, he recounts the life and works in a hospital during COVID 19, busting medical jargon related to the virus, reflecting on his personal experience during the emergency, and ultimately providing a heartfelt insight into the everyday situations of an emergency department during a pandemic.

If the entire world is now focused on COVID patients (and rightfully so), doctors do not leave other people in need unattended, and neither do DocTubers. Dr Danielle Jones, known as Mama Doctor Jones, works as an obstetrician and gynaecologist in College Station, Texas, and hasn’t forgotten about her patients even during these times. Her channel focuses on Ob/Gyn facts, advice, and hilarious commentaries of medical TV shows interspersed with simple yet effective scientific explanations; throughout the lockdown, she has expanded her content to include Q&A sessions about pregnancy and delivery during a pandemic, making it clear that doctors need to adapt their advice to every possible situation.

So, bringing medical personalities online could be fundamental to make these professions more accessible and humanize their figures while re-gaining the social media outposts that are in the hands of fake news spreaders. Sounds fun and non-complicated, doesn’t it?

Nope. The risks and challenges of getting on social media for medical practitioners are no jokes.

Dr Austin Chiang, a gastroenterologist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, is aware of the pitfalls of becoming a TikTok Doctor, but also of the bright sides of it. His 175k followers on TikTok know that he will go great lengths to bust false myths about health, healthcare and the Coronavirus emergency. All while dancing to the app’s latest musical trends.

Chiang has taken on himself the challenge of appealing to a young audience without crossing the line of unethical behaviour, bringing accurate content through short, musical and humorous content. The dancing gastroenterologist doesn’t want to offend patients with his videos, something that could happen if you joke too heavily on their lack of expertise and naivety about basic medical knowledge, nor he wants to get into patient-specific medical advice. He caters to the viewership potential of TikTok to spread general education and create awareness even in that younger population that may not watch the news or read scientific journals, preventing them to fall into the claws of non-medical sources. “If we’re not there to be a voice for evidence-based medicine, who’s going to do that for us?” Chiang told The New York Times. “Anti-vaxxers are already using social media to their advantage. By putting doctors on social media, we’re able to be a source of more accurate information.”

What also concerns Dr Chiang and other rising or established medical influencers such as Doctor Mike, is the danger of becoming “human brands” because of sponsorships and paid partnerships. Varshavski accepts sponsors but doesn’t make them look like medical endorsements, while Chiang warns against the bleak consequences of product placement: “Some people out there are aligning us with big pharma already. The last thing they want to see is that we are selling a product or idea.”

One more harsh critic against doctors on TikTok and social media during this pandemic is that they do not seem to be working. Their “frivolous activities” exposed them to the rage of some commentators who accused them to be unrespectful of the grave situation the world is undergoing. Quite a different perspective from that of Dr Jason Campbell, an anesthesiology resident at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.

The motto that Campbell proposes to his 238k followers on TikTok is true to his actions: *Take Your Job Seriously, Not Yourself*. Dr Campbell is one of the most prolific creators of dance challenges that engage medical staff and doctors: they all dance together to reach out to the community with positive vibes, to lighten the hearts of people who are suffering, reminding them that there’s some hope to smile again. And, they dance for themselves, to unwind and boost their own morale. “We take our jobs seriously, but we don’t have to take ourselves seriously,” Campbell told BuzzFeed News. “As a coping mechanism, it’s something I do often.”

Bringing a community together is probably one of the biggest powers of platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where content can go viral in a matter of a few hours, and everything that might have sounded frivolous before could become utterly significant if in the right hands.

That’s what happened with the #DontRush challenge when it encountered a group of NHS doctors. A lighthearted social media video challenge where people seem to change makeup or clothes in the blink of an eye became a medium to question the “underrepresentation of diversity in the NHS”, since most of the doctors participating are from African backgrounds. By “passing” the challenge between each other, the doctors show their unity in fighting the pandemic and serving the NHS at their best, while also reminding people to find creativity and fun even if they’re confined in their own homes.

So, what are your takes on the rise of medical influencers on social media? Where do you think this trend will go and how will it evolve once the pandemic is finally over? What can content creators cater from these examples and how can they interact with DocTubers and TikTok Doctors?

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