Social media platforms like TikTok serve as a source of medical information and a platform for users to share their health(care) experiences. Discussions of contraception, particularly intrauterine device (IUD) insertions and experiences, are prominently featured. Previous studies find that IUD TikTok videos are overwhelmingly negative and highlight patient distrust after insertions due to lack of pain management. The comment sections of these videos have yet to be explored.

To address this gap, we utilized Apify, a web scraping tool, to compile a list of the top 50, publicly available TikToks under the search “iud”. We performed 2 separate data scrapes (1: videos 2: comments) to create our dataset. 3399 Comments were coded thematically by the study team.

Commenters discussed personal IUD insertion and removal experiences (36.4%), contraceptive experience more broadly (22.3%), and side effects (10.5%). Commenters’ experiences reflected themes of provider credibility (3.3%) and criticism (5.5%), sharing advice (4.5%), questions or requests (10.8%), gaslighting/betrayal (2.8%), contraceptive decision making (8.2%), and sexism in pain management (2.9%). Commenters frequently identified sexism as the reason for limited pain management options for IUD insertion. When commenters recounted their IUD insertion experience, whether they praised or criticized their healthcare provider was often tied to communication and pain management options offered.

This research finds TikTok may serve as an important place for people to unpack experiences and beliefs about IUDs and elucidates upon potential gaps in provider/patient trust.