Are teens really using Ozempic and Wegovy at rising rates?

What did @staytunednbc actually say?

The report centers on a six-year-old in Michigan who lost 58 pounds on Wegovy, then pivots to claim roughly 4,000 prescriptions of weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic were written for children ages 12 to 17 in 2023 following FDA approval. A physician is quoted defending the treatment, framing it as simply helping a 12-year-old "be healthy." The piece closes by briefly naming nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain as side effects, and mentions clinician concern about growth effects and eating disorder misuse.

The structural problem here is immediate: the report opens on a six-year-old, then switches to data about 12-to-17-year-olds. Those are not the same population, and conflating them without explanation is sloppy journalism that will confuse viewers about who these drugs are actually approved for.

Does the science back this up?

Partially, but with important caveats the report glosses over. The FDA approved semaglutide (Wegovy) in December 2022 for adolescents 12 and older with obesity, based on the STEP TEENS trial. That trial enrolled 201 adolescents and found meaningful reductions in BMI. But the six-year-old at the top of this story sits well outside that approval.

The 4,000 prescription figure for 2023 is consistent with what IQVIA pharmacy data and reporting from outlets like KFF Health News have cited. It is a real number, though it represents a relatively small slice of the adolescent population with obesity, which the CDC estimates affects roughly 14.7 million children and adolescents. The gap between those two numbers tells its own story about access barriers, cost, and clinical caution.

On side effects, the report is accurate but thin. The STEP TEENS trial (Weghuber et al., 2022, New England Journal of Medicine) confirmed gastrointestinal side effects are the most common adverse events, occurring in a majority of participants. The concern about effects on growth and bone development is real but still largely unresolved, because long-term pediatric safety data simply does not exist yet.

What did they get wrong (or right)?

The biggest factual problem is the six-year-old. No GLP-1 drug is FDA-approved for a six-year-old. Using this child as the emotional anchor of a piece about adolescent drug approvals without clearly stating she is receiving off-label treatment is misleading. Off-label prescribing is legal and sometimes clinically justified, but viewers deserve to know that is what they are watching.

The conflation of Wegovy and Ozempic is also worth calling out. Both contain semaglutide, but Ozempic is FDA-approved only for type 2 diabetes in adults. Wegovy carries the obesity indication. Treating them as interchangeable in a story about pediatric weight loss creates regulatory confusion.

Credit where it is due: naming the eating disorder risk is legitimate. Clinicians including those publishing in Pediatrics (Hampl et al., 2023) have raised concern about prescribing appetite-suppressing drugs to adolescents who may have undiagnosed disordered eating. The report raises this, even if briefly.

What should you actually know?

The FDA approval for semaglutide in adolescents 12 and older is real and based on trial data, not just regulatory enthusiasm. The STEP TEENS trial showed a 16.1 percent reduction in BMI in the treatment group versus 0.6 percent in the placebo group. That is a clinically significant finding.

But "FDA-approved" does not mean "fully understood." Long-term data on how these drugs affect puberty, bone density, lean muscle mass, and psychological relationship with food in adolescents is still being collected. The American Academy of Pediatrics 2023 guidelines support early, intensive intervention for severe pediatric obesity, and GLP-1 drugs are part of that conversation, but they are not a standalone fix and should be paired with behavioral support.

If a parent or adolescent is considering this, the conversation belongs in a clinical setting with a physician who can assess eating disorder history, growth trajectory, and family context. A TikTok news clip is not that conversation.

Bottom line

The NBC report gets the broad strokes right: teen GLP-1 use is rising, the FDA did approve Wegovy for adolescents, and there are legitimate safety questions. But leading with an off-label six-year-old case without disclosure, blurring Wegovy and Ozempic, and skipping over the absence of long-term pediatric data leaves viewers with a more confident picture than the evidence supports.