When the primary gateway to reproductive health information is an algorithm-driven feed, the downstream consequences extend well beyond factual gaps — they appear to reach into mental health. This cross-sectional study from Romania illuminates a dual burden: young people who rely on social media for contraceptive information not only know less, they report higher rates of anxiety, suggesting that misinformation exposure is not a neutral inconvenience but a psychologically consequential phenomenon.
Drawing on a cohort of 210 Romanian adolescents and young adults, the research team found that 58.1% identified social media as their predominant source of contraceptive information. Those in this group demonstrated measurably lower contraceptive literacy compared with peers who consulted healthcare providers or structured educational materials. Crucially, multivariable logistic regression identified social media reliance and contraceptive misconception endorsement as independent predictors of both poor knowledge scores and moderate-to-severe anxiety as measured by the GAD-7. The PHQ-9 similarly flagged elevated depressive symptoms within higher-misinformation subgroups, though anxiety associations appeared stronger in the regression models.
This finding sits within a growing international literature linking health misinformation to psychological distress — a dynamic previously documented in vaccine hesitancy and chronic disease contexts, but less studied for reproductive health specifically. The Romanian setting is notable: post-communist healthcare systems in Central and Eastern Europe have historically underinvested in school-based sex education, creating information vacuums that digital platforms readily fill, often poorly. The study's 210-person cross-sectional design limits causal inference — it cannot confirm whether misinformation causes anxiety or whether anxious individuals are more likely to seek and accept alarming online content. Reverse causality and unmeasured confounders (parental education, urban-rural divide, religiosity) remain live concerns. Still, the convergence of knowledge deficits and mental health signals in the same subpopulation is clinically meaningful and argues for integrating digital media literacy into reproductive health curricula, not as a standalone module, but as a mental health intervention in its own right.
