UK health misinformation statistics
What is actually measured about health misinformation in the UK — and what is not. Every figure links to the study or report it comes from.
How to read this page
Most statistics quoted about health misinformation in the UK were not measured in the UK. We separate the two: figures from UK samples first, then the global measurements that are frequently applied to the UK, clearly labelled as global.
Where no reliable UK figure exists, we say so rather than borrow one. The data gaps below are as much a part of the picture as the numbers.
Measured in the UK
| Figure | What it measures | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 in 10 | UK adults who encounter misinformation in any four-week period | UK adults | Ofcom, Adults' Media Use and Attitudes (2024) |
| 0–56.9% | Misinformation prevalence in mental-health and neurodivergence content, across 27 studies and 5,057 posts — higher on TikTok than YouTube | UK / TikTok | Carter et al., Journal of Social Media Research (2026) |
| Qualitative | UK health misinformation landscape review, including the link to measles resurgence — descriptive, no single headline prevalence figure | UK | Information Integrity UK, Health Misinformation in the UK (2025) |
| Qualitative | Annual review of UK misinformation and the fact-checking response — monitoring, not prevalence measurement | UK | Full Fact, Annual Report (2024) |
Figures are quoted exactly as the source states them. Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or averaged.
Global figures often applied to the UK
| Figure | What it measures | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 51% | Share of vaccine-related social posts found to be misleading | Global | WHO systematic review (Piltch-Loeb et al.), Bulletin of the WHO (2022) |
| 6× faster | Speed at which false news spreads compared with true content, across 126,000 cascades | Global Twitter | Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, Science (2018) |
| 56% / 71% | Cancer patients who saw treatment misinformation, and the share who believed it | US / global patients | JMIR Cancer, exposure and reactions study (2023) |
| 19.3% | Share of antimicrobial-resistance posts that are misinformation; spreads 2.4× faster than factual content | Cross-platform, 2015–25 | PubMed, AMR digital misinformation study (2025) |
Figures are quoted exactly as the source states them. Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or averaged.
These are sound measurements, but they describe global or US populations. Treat them as context for the UK, not as UK prevalence.
Where the UK evidence is missing
- No UK-wide study measures the prevalence of health misinformation by topic. The Ofcom figure covers misinformation generally, not health specifically.
- No longitudinal UK dataset tracks the same platforms year on year, so trend claims about UK platforms cannot be sourced to a single measurement.
- Reproductive-health misinformation has no UK prevalence figure at all — identified as a gap by the 2024 JMIR scoping review.
- Cancer and vaccine exposure figures widely quoted in UK coverage come from US or global samples, not UK patients.
Closing the UK measurement gap is UTA's Phase 0 activity: commissioning a baseline study that would replace borrowed global figures with UK data.