An explosion of ‘sickfluencers’ on social media is fuelling Britain’s worklessness crisis as they coach people on how to maximise benefit payouts, a report reveals.
Thousands of users on internet forums are also sharing advice on the best way to describe symptoms and what to include in claims forms, with encouragement to ‘lay it on thick’.
Researchers from Policy Exchange found many claimants are now using AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to produce model answers and strengthen the wording of their applications even when they have no medical evidence for such claims.
The think tank warns the health and disability benefits system is increasingly at risk of being ‘distorted’ by sickness influencers who are gaining hordes of followers online by coaching potential new claimants.
They produce ‘walkthrough guides’ on how to ace the process, detail products and services people can demand and lure people in with the suggestion they can help them ‘get up to £62k in ADHD support’.
Some posts have tens of thousands of views.
The report finds social media users could be lured into making claims after seeing the content online when they may never have considered doing so otherwise.
The pervasive nature of the videos and posts has the impact of ‘normalising’ a benefits lifestyle and creates an entitlement culture, it adds.
An explosion of ‘sickfluencers’ on social media is fuelling Britain’s worklessness crisis as they coach people on how to maximise benefit payouts, a report reveals (file photo)
In one TikTok video entitled, ‘If you’ve got ADHD you’re really going to want to hear this’, a young man films a stash of equipment including noise-cancelling headphones
One TikToker described how she claimed £13,000 using the scheme
In a clip tagged #ADHDhacks, a TikToker reveals she is waiting on her own application before signing off by rubbing her fingers together and saying: ‘Show me the money, baby’
The report, ‘Sickfluencers and AI: How technology is changing the Health and Disability Benefits System’, is endorsed by Reform UK shadow chancellor Robert Jenrick who warns in the foreword that ‘the ballooning benefits bill will bankrupt Britain unless the Government act’.
Economic inactivity caused by ill health costs the UK £212billion each year, equivalent to around 7 per cent of national income.
Disability prevalence has increased from 11.9million (a fifth of the population) in 2013/14 to 16.8million (a quarter of the population) in 2023/24.
The starkest rise has been among 16 to 24-year-olds, where disability prevalence has more than doubled from 8 per cent to 18 per cent in a decade.
Around 1.5 million people receive Personal Independence Payment for mental health conditions, an increase of over 100,000 in the past year alone.
Policy Exchange is calling for tighter assessment standards, a requirement to produce comprehensive medical documentation for claims and a major expansion of in-person assessments to improve the robustness of the system.
The report says: ‘The rigid and tick-box nature of the current regime has left it increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by online communities, so-called ‘sickfluencers’, and artificial intelligence tools.
‘Together, these forces are reshaping how individuals understand eligibility, frame need, and interact with the welfare system, contributing to a sharp rise in successful claims and placing a growing and unsustainable strain on public finances.’
Mr Jenrick adds: ‘Those who’ve paid in and fallen on hard times deserve support.
‘But as Policy Exchange’s report shows, it’s increasingly clear people are gaming the system, spurred on by social media influencers who are taking it in at the taxpayers’ expense.
‘The authorities should be coming down on welfare scammers like a ton of bricks.
‘And we urgently need to return to in-person assessments to root out those choosing to be on benefits.’
The report also found evidence that some people are abusing the Access to Work scheme to fund a support worker to cover standard business administration tasks.
This means taxpayers are subsidising ordinary job roles rather than helping to keep a disabled person in work.
Gareth Lyon, head of health and social care at Policy Exchange, said: ‘The benefits system needs to be robust, respected and recognised as legitimate.
‘It was designed for a world in which information moved slowly but social media platforms, online communities and artificial intelligence tools have fundamentally changed that environment and are putting the integrity of the system at risk while costs to taxpayers escalate to unsustainable levels.
‘The system now contains a growing grey area where uncertainty about entitlement can easily expand and lead to distortions, particularly with some actors being incentivised to encourage more claims and for particular products and services.
‘The task for policymakers is not to reverse technology but to modernise the system and to ensure its integrity so that support is targeted effectively that the interests of taxpayers are protected.’
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: ‘We’re fixing the broken welfare system we inherited which allowed 80 per cent of assessments to take place virtually.
‘As the report says, we are substantially increasing the proportion of face-to-face assessments to 30 per cent, as part of a package of reforms that will save £1.9bn.
‘We are also cracking down on benefit fraud and encourage anyone who suspects it to report it to us. Actively promoting, encouraging, or assisting in fraud is a crime with a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.’
