"You Say Cognitive, I Say Cognitive": Can Misinformation-Informed Interventions Help Reduce Risk for Disordered Eating in Youth?

Objective: This paper explores how cognitive models from misinformation research can enhance existing interventions for eating disorder (ED) risk, particularly in youth. We argue that frameworks developed to counter belief formation in misinformation offer a novel and underexplored avenue for intervening earlier in the pathway to disordered eating, particularly in environments saturated with persuasive -appearance- and -diet-related content that increase ED risk.

Method: We suggest that cognitive mechanisms implicated in both ED vulnerability and susceptibility to misinformation offer overlapping targets for intervention. Drawing on both literatures, we outline how -misinformation-informed strategies such as prebunking, inoculation, and content evaluation tasks can serve as complementary, brief, digitally delivered interventions.

Results: The integration of interventions tackling processing increasing ED risk with misinformation-informed approaches may be well-suited to reduce ED risk in young people who primarily use social media for appearance reasons. These may be more effective when placed within short-form, algorithm-driven social media environments where individuals encounter problematic content with limited clinical oversight.

Discussion: Misinformation-informed strategies offer new cognitive leverage points that complement existing ED interventions. When adapted thoughtfully, these tools may serve as low-burden, scalable prevention approaches that extend support beyond the clinic and into the digital spaces where risk often emerges. We propose five concrete steps to explore this research stream.