Social Media and Telemedicine in Ophthalmology: Misinformation, Patient Perception, and the Evolving Digital Patient.

Digital platforms have become a dominant source of ophthalmic health information, shaping how patients understand visual symptoms, form treatment expectations, and make decisions before clinical evaluation occurs. Although increased access to online content has the potential to improve patient engagement and reach underserved populations, ophthalmology remains uniquely vulnerable to misinformation due to its visually driven nature, reliance on image-based interpretation, and limited availability of high-quality, evidence-based, ophthalmic content within high-engagement digital spaces. Across platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, content remains variable; although some institutionally affiliated videos may demonstrate higher educational quality metrics, visually compelling content often spreads widely regardless of accuracy, resulting in inconsistent information quality, patient misconceptions, and challenges during clinical counseling. Despite growing awareness of these issues, their implications for clinical practice and patient communication remain incompletely understood. In this review, we synthesize current evidence on social media-driven patient education, misinformation dynamics, and the expanding role of digital technologies across ophthalmic practice, education and telemedicine and introduces infodemiology as a conceptual tool to characterize information spread and inform targeted clinical and public health interventions. Beyond patient education, digital technologies are reshaping how eye care professionals are trained and how care is delivered, with increasing reliance on simulation-based learning and teleophthalmology models. While these innovations offer meaningful opportunities to improve access and efficiency, they also introduce challenges related to digital and health literacy gaps, diagnostic limitations, privacy concerns, and inequitable access to technology. Effective integration of digital ophthalmology requires aligning technological innovation with clinical rigor, equity, and evidence-based communication to ensure digital transformation strengthens, rather than undermines, high-quality ophthalmic care.