TikTok has been making an attempt to occupy the world of mental health since 2021 via its Wellness Hub, where users can seek out videos on food and nutrition, fitness, life advice and Mindfulness.
On the surface, this would appear to be a worthy counterargument to the contention, which Congress is investigating, that the social-media platform is knowingly polluting the minds of millions of American teens.
Indeed, TikTok’s crisis-intervention and suicide-prevention hotlines are valuable additions that serve a real purpose.
But the lamentable larger picture is self-diagnosis, copycats and a heavily used icon called “Stories” where you can look for videos of others in trouble to relate to and empathize with.
Unfortunately, there is a frequently negative snowballing effect combined with a lack of identifiable standards.
And mental health is individualistic, what means that sadness for one person may be a sign of severe depression for another.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent survey found that close to 60% of adolescent girls have experienced episodes of sadness over the past year.
Dr. John Walkup, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told me on SiriusXM’s Doctor Radio last week that, by contrast, he has found teens to be resilient; sadness may sometimes be part of normal coping.
It is troubling to think of TikTok preying on a teen’s weakness by providing content that equates fatigue or discoordination with ADHD for example.
It is also disturbing to consider that since TikTok is monetized, with the goal to reach as many people as possible, it is too easy for content creators to encourage weakness and self-doubt to impose diagnoses that may well not be accurate.
Users may take these videos too seriously, especially if they are TikTok addicts.
The COVID pandemic has created a perfect storm for this problem, by sequestering and isolating our kids to the point where they increasingly seek outlets on social media and become trapped inside a world they think they can orchestrate even as they feel less in control in the real world.
Multiple studies have now shown that close to 20% of our teens are depressed, and TikTok may be one way to seek out freedom, even if it embroils you unwittingly in an addictive trap.
One recent Center for Countering Digital Hate study found that when researchers posed as 13-year-old users and searched and liked mental-health videos, they received potentially harmful content (including about eating disorders and self-harm) from TikTok every few minutes or more.
A Canadian Journal of Psychiatry analysis of highly sought TikTok videos about ADHD found that more than half were misleading.
Self-diagnosis also takes place in a vacuum caused in part by a paucity of mental-health professionals combined with feeling stigmatized or marginalized if you reveal you’re depressed or anxious.
TikTok can feel anonymous even though you can be the victim of stalking, and the platform is making an effort to connect people with friends and associates from real life.
And back in 2021, TikTok contracted with YouGov, a global market-research team that monitors content and attempts to devise strategies for filling needs. This approach shapes content under the guise of identifying need.
This can be quite dangerous.
As TikTok users feel the need to see their lives increasingly through a medical lens, they may become vulnerable to exploitation and stereotypification, as when Max Klymenko, the self-proclaimed brain of TikTok with 2.8 million followers, shows millions of people how to live by example, including cutting lines to get in front of others.
When patients come to see me already thinking they know what they have because of TikTok, it makes my life as their physician much more difficult.
While I welcome the open discussion, I also find that TikTok-spread preconceived notions about mental health are frequently wrong and also very difficult to counter.
Marc Siegel, MD, is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News medical analyst.
