Third-Party Reproduction - What's Trending on Instagram?

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence, authorship and content type of third-party reproduction-related information shared on Instagram by hashtag analysis.

Methods: A list of 10 hashtags consisting of terms related to third-party reproduction was derived. Content analysis was performed in December 2021 on the most recent 100 posts for each hashtag to determine authorship and content type.

Results: Our search yielded 838,151 posts. The 3 most popular hashtags were 'surrogacy', 'surrogate' and 'surrogacy journey.' Authorship of the top posts were: patients (59.2%), professional society (14.2%), for-profit commercial groups (11.4%), allied health professional (9.4%), physicians (3.3%), and other (2.5%). Patient experiences accounted for the largest share of posts (39.4%), followed by personal posts unrelated to diagnosis (21.5%), outreach posts (19.5%), advertisements (14.2%) and educational (4.8%). Patients authored the majority of posts.

Conclusions: The vast majority of Instagram posts related to third-party reproduction were authored by patients who shared their own personal experiences. Within surrogacy, both gestational carriers and intended parents shared their experiences providing perspective into the surrogacy process. Physician participation may improve the quality and quantity of educational posts and offer a low-cost platform for networking and connecting with patients.