TikTok has gained international attention in recent years for its short-form, addicting videos that appeal to the younger demographic.
However, a pair of companion reports released by Amnesty International highlights a darker side to the platform.
TikTok’s Alarming Impact on Youth Mental Health
These reports shed light on how TikTok’s content recommender system and data collection practices pose a grave danger to young users, amplifying depressive and suicidal content that could worsen existing mental health challenges.
The two investigations, Feel Exposed: Caught in TikTok’s Surveillance Web and Driven into the Darkness: How TikTok Encourages Self-harm and Suicidal Ideation, present a concerning image of the platform’s effects on children’s and adolescents’ mental health. They disclose that the promotion of hazardous content on TikTok is caused by the platform’s recommender system and underlying revenue model.
A joint technical investigation conducted with partners at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute found that when children and young people engage with mental health-related content on TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, they are quickly drawn into rabbit holes filled with potentially harmful material. This includes videos that romanticize and encourage depressive thinking, self-harm, and even suicide.
TikTok’s Role in Mental Health Challenges
Lisa Dittmer, an Amnesty International researcher, highlighted the manipulative and addictive
design practices employed by TikTok, which aim to keep users engaged for as long as possible. The algorithmic content recommender system, credited with TikTok’s rapid global rise, exposes young users with pre-existing mental health challenges to serious risks of harm.
Driven into the Darkness: How TikTok Encourages Self-harm and Suicidal Ideation delves into how TikTok’s relentless pursuit of young users’ attention can exacerbate mental health concerns, such as depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, a highly personalized and infinitely scrollable page, is filled with algorithmically recommended content based on the user’s inferred interests.
The technical research revealed alarming statistics. After spending 5-6 hours on TikTok, almost 1 in 2 videos shown were related to mental health and potentially harmful content, a volume roughly 10 times higher than what accounts with no interest in mental health received.
The rabbit hole effect was even more pronounced when researchers manually rewatched mental health-related videos, with more than half of the videos in the ‘For You’ll be related to mental health struggles within 20 minutes of manual research.
TikTok’s impact on the mental health of its young users is a growing concern. The platform must address these issues to ensure the well-being of its users, particularly those most vulnerable to harmful content.
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