WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - More than half of the most popular TikTok videos giving mental health advice contain false or misleading information, according to an investigation led by The Guardian.
During the investigation, they looked at the top 100 videos under the hashtag mentalhealthtips and asked psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health experts to check if the advice was accurate.
The experts found that 52 of the 100 videos, giving advice on serious issues like trauma, anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions, had some form of misinformation. Some videos were unclear, while some were not useful.
Dr. David Okai, a neuropsychiatrist from King's College London, said some videos mixed up important mental health terms, like using 'anxiety' and 'mental disorder' as if they mean the same thing. This could confuse people about what mental illness really is.
He also noted that many videos gave advice based only on personal experiences, which may not work for everyone. He said short, catchy TikTok videos can sometimes oversimplify serious mental health topics, making it harder to understand the full picture.
While therapy was often promoted in these videos, Dr. Okai warned that therapy isn't a quick fix or a cure-all. It works well for many people, but it's not the same for everyone.
'Each video is guilty of suggesting that everyone has the same experience of PTSD with similar symptoms that can easily be explained in a 30-second reel. The truth is that PTSD and trauma symptoms are highly individual experiences that cannot be compared across people and require a trained and accredited clinician to help a person understand the individual nature of their distress,' Amber Johnston, a British Psychological Society-accredited psychologist, told the news outlet.
'TikTok is spreading misinformation by suggesting that there are secret universal tips and truths that may actually make a viewer feel even worse, like a failure, when these tips don't simply cure.'
Labour MP Chi Onwurah said the UK parliament's technology committee is looking into online misinformation. She said the committee is concerned that the Online Safety Act or OSA might not be doing enough to deal with harmful or misleading content, especially because of how social media algorithms recommend such posts.
'Content recommender systems used by platforms like TikTok have been found to amplify potentially harmful misinformation, like this misleading or false mental health advice,' she added. 'There's clearly an urgent need to address shortcomings in the OSA to make sure it can protect the public's online safety and their health.'
Commenting on the findings, a TikTok spokesperson told The Guardian, 'TikTok is a place where millions of people express themselves, come to share their authentic mental health journeys, and find a supportive community. There are clear limitations to the methodology of this study, which opposes this free expression and suggests that people should not be allowed to share their own stories.'
'We proactively work with health experts at the World Health Organization and NHS to promote reliable information on our platform and remove 98 percent of harmful misinformation before it's reported to us.'
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