Predatory marketing and false health promotion on social media: risk pathways in diet, fitness, and supplement communication

As the commercial circulation of health content on social media continues to intensify, large volumes of fitness, nutrition, and wellness information lacking scientific grounding are repeatedly pushed to users, heightening the likelihood that psychologically susceptible individuals internalize distorted beliefs and engage in harmful practices. This study examines the mechanism through which exposure to such content influences psychological vulnerability, strengthens false health beliefs, shapes risky behavioral choices, and ultimately affects perceived health status. Using 482 valid survey responses, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, bootstrap mediation tests, multigroup comparisons, and robustness checks to investigate these pathways. The findings show that exposure significantly increases psychological vulnerability, which further promotes endorsement of inaccurate beliefs and encourages risky health behaviors, leading to poorer health outcomes. All indirect effects were statistically supported, and the moderating influences of Government Support and avoidance tendencies revealed that individual and contextual factors can alter the strength of the mechanism. Robustness analyses demonstrated that the belief variable is indispensable, as removing it led to substantial declines in model fit, indicating that adverse outcomes arise not from isolated exposure but from the gradual reinforcement and internalization of misleading claims. These results clarify the psychological and behavioral processes through which misleading health information exerts its influence in digital environments and provide empirical grounding for regulatory strategies that seek to intervene in the formation and consolidation of erroneous health beliefs rather than relying solely on limiting content visibility.