Roughly one in five adults in the United Kingdom between the ages of 18 and 34 has made a health decision they later regretted after relying on false or misleading information, according to a new report from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
The report, titled "Health Misinformation: Public Perceptions of Threat to the UK," was released on Sept. 28, 2026. It draws on a survey of 2,110 UK adults commissioned by LSHTM and conducted by the polling firm Survation on Sept. 9–10, 2026.
The headline finding
A fifth of younger adults reported both a health decision they came to regret and an attribution of that decision to information that was false or misleading. The result places personal consequences, not just abstract concern, at the center of the UK's debate over health misinformation.
The picture sharpens further in the youngest cohort. More than a third of respondents aged 18 to 24 — 38% — said they personally knew someone who had suffered serious harm after making a health decision based on false or misleading information. The report defines that harm in concrete terms: contracting a preventable disease, delaying medical treatment, or experiencing symptoms for longer than would otherwise have been necessary.
Worry extends well beyond young adults
Concern about the effects of bad health information is not confined to the age groups most likely to report regret. Nearly half of all adults surveyed — 49% — said they worried about family members being harmed by health decisions those relatives made on the basis of misinformation.
That anxiety appears to run in both directions. Some 42% of respondents said they were concerned about family members sharing health claims without first checking whether those claims were accurate.
Confidence in separating reliable health information from unreliable material looks limited. Almost one in five respondents (19%) described themselves as either not very confident or not at all confident in judging whether a health claim was accurate.
Where people say they encounter misinformation
Respondents who said they had previously come across health misinformation were asked where they had found it. Digital platforms dominated the answers:
- 61% had encountered health misinformation on social media.
- 30% had come across it on websites or blogs.
- 27% cited family or friends as a source.
- 26% pointed to traditional news media.
- 20% cited work colleagues.
- 19% named AI chatbots.
The responses suggest misinformation reaches people through a mixture of broadcast-style platforms, personal networks and, increasingly, conversational artificial intelligence tools. Notably, roughly one in five respondents identified chatbots as a channel — a figure that places automated assistants alongside workplaces and traditional outlets as a reported source.
The topics people are seeing
When asked which health misinformation topics they had encountered in the previous six months, respondents most frequently named vaccines, at 24%. Dietary supplements and weight-loss injections followed at 21%, then climate change at 18% and mental health at 16%.
That list spans categories that shape individual treatment choices, such as vaccination and medication, as well as subjects that feed broader public argument. The report does not attempt to rank the relative danger of each topic; it records what members of the public say they have seen.
Perceived consequences and eroding trust
Respondents largely expected misinformation to produce tangible outcomes. Around six in 10 agreed it was very or somewhat likely that health misinformation could lead people to believe in or buy fake cures and could undermine trust in health services.
That expectation matters because it points to a second-order effect. Beyond any single bad decision, the survey suggests a public that anticipates damage to the credibility of health institutions themselves — a dynamic that can complicate official responses to genuine health threats.
What the numbers do and do not show
A snapshot of perception
The LSHTM survey captures self-reported experience and opinion among 2,110 adults at a single point in time. It establishes what people say they have seen, regretted and feared. It does not, on its own, prove that a specific piece of misinformation caused a specific health outcome, and the survey design does not track individuals over time.
The variation between age groups is nonetheless striking. Regret attributed to misinformation appears most common among 18- to 34-year-olds, while the youngest respondents, aged 18 to 24, were the most likely to report knowing someone seriously harmed. Whether that reflects heavier exposure, greater willingness to recognize and report a bad decision, or a combination of both is not resolved by the data presented.
Sources are plural, not singular
Another theme running through the findings is that no single channel carries the blame. Social media is the most frequently cited source by a wide margin, but family, friends, colleagues, blogs and news media all feature in meaningful numbers. For anyone trying to design a response — whether a public health body, a platform or a school — the data implies that a single-target intervention would miss a substantial share of the routes by which misleading claims travel.
Why the report is being watched
LSHTM frames the research as an assessment of how the UK public perceives the threat posed by health misinformation. By combining questions about personal regret, harm to acquaintances, confidence in evaluating claims and concern about relatives, the report assembles a picture of a population that is neither uniformly confident nor uniformly alarmed.
The strongest signal remains the one in five figure for younger adults who regret a health decision. It converts an often-abstract policy debate into a measurable, personal outcome: a decision someone would make differently if they had better information at the moment it mattered.
Also relevant is the 19% who lack confidence in judging a health claim — a group that may be especially receptive to both accurate guidance and convincing falsehoods. And the 42% worried about relatives sharing unchecked claims points to a social dimension that health authorities rarely address directly: misinformation often circulates through trusted personal relationships rather than anonymous strangers.
What to watch next
Several questions follow from the findings. Whether the regret reported by 18- to 34-year-olds concentrates in particular topics, such as the vaccines, supplements and weight-loss injections respondents most often said they had seen misleading claims about, is not broken out in the summary material. Nor is it clear how the 19% who named AI chatbots as a source compare with other age groups.
What the report does provide is a baseline. As generative tools become more capable of producing fluent, plausible health content, and as social platforms continue to shape how that content spreads, the LSHTM survey offers a set of numbers against which future measurements can be compared. The full report is published by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
This article is based on reporting by Medical Xpress. Read the original article.
Originally published on medicalxpress.com
