Research institute · Pew Research Center
Only 10% of US influencer audiences fully trust the health advice they get
A follow-up Pew analysis on trust in health and wellness influencers finds the audience is largely sceptical: just 10% say they trust all or most of what they hear, while a quarter trust little or none. Most sit in a middle ground that has clear implications for how brands partner with creators.
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Key findings at a glance
- 10% of US adults who get health/wellness info from influencers say they trust ALL or MOST of it. Three times more say they trust little or none.
- 65% sit in the middle, they trust SOME of the information. The default audience posture is selective, not blind trust.
- 24% say they trust not too much or none of the information they get from health and wellness influencers.
- 36% of 65+ consumers express the strongest scepticism. Older audiences are materially harder to convert via creator content.
- 54% say influencer health content has helped them better understand how to be healthy, practical value still outweighs confusion (12%).
- 36% of 18-29 year-olds say the information makes them MORE WORRIED about their overall health. Anxiety is a side-effect of the content, not just a feature.
What the report covers
This is the trust-and-credibility cut of the same Pew study that mapped who US health and wellness influencers are. The methodology mirrors the parent study, two waves of the American Trends Panel surveying US adults who consume this content (n=5,023 in June 2025, n=5,111 in October 2025).
Pew's "consumers" here means the 40% of US adults who say they ever get health and wellness information from social-media influencers or podcasts. Within that group, three trust-related questions: how much they trust the information, whether it helps them be healthier, and how the content affects their worry levels. The trust skew is towards scepticism, not credulity. The age cuts inside that scepticism are what reveal the partnership-design implications.
Critically, Pew separates the "we consume this content" question from the "we trust it" question. The 40% consumption number is broad; the 10% high-trust number is narrow. That gap is where the marketing opportunity (and the marketing risk) sits.
What this means for UK marketers
Three operational lessons for UK B2C brands running creator partnerships in health, wellness, fitness, supplements, food and drink, or any adjacent category.
Default audience posture is selective trust, not high trust. When 65% of the audience trusts SOME of what an influencer says, your creative job isn't to lean on the creator's authority, it's to give the audience reasons inside the content itself to trust THIS particular claim. Specifics, sources, demonstrations, before/afters with verifiable data points. Generic endorsement reads as the 24% category most viewers would discount.
Older audiences are materially harder to convert via creator content. The 36% scepticism rate among 65+ is the inverse of the under-50 reach number from Pew's parent study. UK brands selling into older demographics, supplements with a heavy 60+ skew, condition-specific products, retirement-segment health, should heavily weight non-creator channels (PR, owned content, qualified retailer partnerships, professional endorsement) and treat creator-led content as a top-of-funnel awareness layer at most, not a conversion layer.
The "more worried" finding is the one to design against. 36% of 18-29 year-olds and 26% of all consumers say influencer health content makes them more worried about their health. For brands, that worry is a double-edged sword, it can drive conversions (panic-buying supplements, overnight diet pivots) but it also generates returns, complaints, and ASA scrutiny. Creator briefs should explicitly steer away from anxiety-amplifying angles ("you might already be deficient", "this could be why you're tired"). The ASA Code on health claims and the MHRA medical-device rules both bite hardest on scaremongering creative; the data here is supporting evidence that the audience is already on edge.
One under-discussed angle: the 22% who say creator health content has made them LESS worried about their health. That's a measurable benefit, not just a side-effect. Brands operating in mental wellness, sleep, anxiety-adjacent supplements have a credible "reassurance" lane in creator content that hasn't been priced into many UK partnerships. Worth testing.
How they got the data
The trust analysis pulls from the same data sources as the parent study: an analysis of 12,800 social-media accounts belonging to 6,828 prominent US health and wellness influencers (each with at least one account >100,000 followers on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok), and two waves of Pew's American Trends Panel, Wave 173 (9-15 June 2025, n=5,023, 88% response rate, ±1.6pp margin of error) and Wave 182 (20-26 October 2025, n=5,111).
The trust questions appear in the second wave. Pew's ATP uses address-based sampling for recruitment via the US Postal Service's Computerized Delivery Sequence File, with online and live-telephone interviewing in English and Spanish. Oversamples are weighted back to population proportions.
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From Pew Research Center · published 07/05/2026