The topics Americans learn about from health and wellness influencers

About this research

This study looks at health and wellness influencers – individuals with large audiences online who provide information about health and wellness, largely on social media. It includes an in-depth analysis of these influencers’ social media presence, including who they are and how they describe themselves. It also takes a deep dive into Americans’ experiences with getting health and wellness information from social media influencers and podcasts.

Why did we do this?

Medical professionals remain the most common source of health information among U.S. adults. But many get information about their health from sources outside of the doctor’s office, including social media. We conducted this study to better understand who the public might be hearing from when they get health and wellness information on social media and to explore the experiences and motivations of those who engage with this information on these sites.

How did we do this?

This analysis is based on two main data sources.

The first is an analysis of 12,800 social media accounts belonging to 6,828 prominent health and wellness influencers. The influencers included in the study have at least one account with more than 100,000 followers on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok and post health and wellness content in English aimed at a U.S. audience (or are owned by the hosts of a top-ranked podcast that features this content). We analyzed their profiles to see who these influencers are and how they describe themselves.

Here is more information about how we identified the influencers included in this study and how we defined the different topics and categories we measured in the analysis.

The second set of data comes from two surveys of U.S. adults that asked about their experiences getting health and wellness information from social media influencers and podcasts. One was conducted in June 2025 among 5,023 U.S. adults, and the other was conducted in October 2025 among 5,111 U.S. adults. Both were fielded on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.

Here are the survey questions used for this report, the detailed responses and the survey methodology.

Some 40% of U.S. adults say they ever get health information from social media influencers or podcasts. This analysis looks at some of the specific topics Americans get from these influencers.

Some of the key takeaways:

• Those who get health and wellness information from social media influencers hear about a wide range of topics. Around a third or more say they often hear about topics like fitness, weight loss and personal appearance.
• Younger adults and women are especially likely to hear about certain topics. Those ages 18 to 29 are especially likely to hear about topics like fitness or mental health, and larger shares of women than men hear about beauty and personal appearance.

Other parts of this study look at the characteristics of health and wellness influencers themselves, why people follow them and how they find them, and how much people trust the information they provide.

Key terms used on this page

In our survey, we asked whether Americans ever get health and wellness information from social media influencers or from podcasts. In discussing the findings, we use “health and wellness influencers” to refer to these two sources. We also use “health and wellness influencer consumer” to refer to U.S. adults who say they ever get information about health and wellness from social media influencers or podcasts.

The topics health and wellness influencer consumers say they hear about often

There are many topics that health and wellness influencers might talk about, but what do audiences actually get? We asked these consumers how much they are hearing about seven different health topics.

Their responses highlight the broad range of topics that these influencers discuss.

A majority of wellness influencer consumers say they hear about each of seven topics asked about at least sometimes.

But certain topics are especially common. Notably, a third or more of health and wellness influencer consumers say they often hear about topics like fitness, weight loss and beauty or personal appearance. And 19% say they often hear about all three of these topics.

This just scratches the surface though: 85% of these users say they at least sometimes hear about topics related to living a healthy lifestyle other than the seven we included in the survey. Around a third say they hear about these other topics often.

Differences by age

Younger health and wellness influencer consumers are especially likely to encounter some of these topics. For instance, 51% of these younger consumers often get content related to fitness.

Mental health is also a topic that younger adults encounter more frequently. Some 39% of these consumers ages 18 to 29 say they hear about mental health and well-being often. That share falls to 25% among those 50 to 64 and 21% among those 65 and older. In Pew Research Center’s recent study on health information and trust, younger adults were especially likely to rate their mental health as fair or poor.

Differences by gender

Half or more of both men and women who get health and wellness information from influencers say they at least sometimes encounter all of the topics we asked about in the survey. But there are certain topics that women get much more frequently than men. Most notably, women are around twice as likely as men to say they often hear about beauty and personal appearance from wellness influencers (44% vs. 20%).

For more information on demographic differences, refer to Appendix A.