Many people turn to the Internet for health-related information. Teenagers tend to search for information about healthy lifestyles (fitness, diet, sexual health, mental health, etc.) online on social media such as TikTok, a video-sharing platform. New research published in Formative Research JMIR found that many videos on mental health topics are received positively and supported by other users.
“Stories related to the health of peers are particularly valued among adolescents. Social media influencers, teen content creators, and microcelebrities are increasingly important resources for health-related information and social support,” study author Corey H. Basch and his colleagues wrote.
“Online social networks provide valuable opportunities to connect with one another to share experiences and strategies for health and wellness, such as meditation, mindfulness, stress relief, and those specific to mental health conditions.” TikTok is a very popular social media app among teenagers, and the researchers were interested in exploring mental health-related content on the platform.
To do this, the researchers searched for English-language videos on TikTok using the hashtag #mentalhealth and collected a sample of the top 100 videos. All videos were analyzed by content categories such as general mental health, anxiety, depression, interpersonal relationships, and other related categories. The comments on each video were also analyzed in relation to certain topics, such as offering support or validation, mentioning one’s own experience with the mental health problem, sharing coping strategies, and other similar topics.
The 100 videos studied received a total of 1,354,100,000 views, 266,900,000 likes and 2,5115,954 comments. Most of the videos (51%) were in the General Mental Health category. The next most prevalent category (40%) was Personal Experience followed by Interpersonal Relationships (18%). The remaining content categories were only represented in less than 15% of all videos.
The most common topics in the comments were offering support or validation (61%) and describing other mental health issues or struggles (49%). The remaining themes were only represented in less than 20% of all videos.
Previous studies have raised concerns about the potential negative mental health effects that platforms like TikTok may have. However, this data is encouraging, as the majority of video comments about people’s mental health issues were positive, supportive, and validating. Importantly, most of the videos in this sample were posted by consumers, not mental health professionals, so future research should investigate how recommendations for coping strategies are represented on TikTok.
The authors cite some limitations of this work, including the inclusion of only videos in English and the smaller sample size.
The study, “Deconstruction of TikTok videos on mental health Cross-sectional and descriptive content analysis“, was written by Corey H. Basch, Lorie Donelle, Joseph Fera and Christie Jaime.
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