A lot of persons transform to the net for health and fitness-similar information. Adolescents are likely to find details about healthy existence (conditioning, diet, sexual wellness, mental health, and many others.) on-line on social media this sort of as TikTok, a video clip sharing system. New investigate revealed in JMIR Formative Exploration identified that lots of films on mental overall health subject areas are received positively and with support from other buyers.
“Health-connected stories from friends are significantly valued among adolescents. Influencers on social media, adolescents who create articles, and microcelebrities are progressively important sources for well being-connected information and facts and social help,” wrote study writer Corey H. Basch and colleagues.
“Online social media networks give precious possibilities to connect with each other to share encounters and techniques for wellbeing and wellness, such as meditation, mindfulness, strain aid, and those people distinct to psychological overall health problems.” TikTok is a really preferred social media app with adolescents and scientists ended up fascinated in checking out the psychological health and fitness associated material on the platform.
To do this, researchers searched for English-language video clips on TikTok working with the hashtag #mentalhealth and collected a sample of the initial 100 video clips. All movies had been analyzed for content types this sort of as Typical Mental Wellness, Anxiousness, Despair, Interpersonal Interactions, and other connected categories. The comments on just about every video were being also analyzed for specified themes this kind of as supplying assist or validation, mentioning one’s possess encounter with the psychological health and fitness challenge, sharing coping methods, and other identical themes.
The 100 movies analyzed acquired a complete of 1,354,100,00 views, 266,900,00 likes, and 2,5115,954 remarks. Most films (51%) were being in the group of Typical Mental Well being. The up coming most widespread class (40%) was Personalized expertise followed by Interpersonal interactions (18%). The remaining content classes had been only represented in a lot less than 15% of all video clips.
The most prevalent themes in the feedback have been presenting help or validation (61%) and describing other mental well being difficulties or struggles (49%). The remaining themes were being only represented in significantly less than 20% of all films.
Previous experiments have expressed worry about the potential detrimental results on psychological health and fitness that platforms like TikTok can have. Even so, this knowledge is encouraging in that most comments on video clips about people’s psychological wellness struggles had been good, supportive, and validating. Importantly, most of the videos in this sample ended up posted by shoppers, not psychological health pros, so upcoming investigation need to look into how recommendations for coping approaches are represented on TikTok.
The authors do cite some restrictions to this operate which include the inclusion of only English-language movies and the smaller sample dimensions.
The research, “Deconstructing TikTok Video clips on Mental Health and fitness Cross-sectional, Descriptive Content material Investigation“, was authored by Corey H. Basch, Lorie Donelle, Joseph Fera, and Christie Jaime.