As a pediatrician, I really struggle with the belief that access to mental health information and resources and information is all positive. I have countless typically-developing teenagers (mostly girls) coming to me wondering if they have autism or ADHD because of information they have encountered on TikTok. I also have teenagers coming to me talking about how they are “dissociating,” a term which, as far as I can tell, they are learning online. You can’t all be dissociating at once, people! I am also wondering about whether kids who are truly in the thick of social media can really discern what is good or bad. Like if you have an eating disorder, perhaps it is helpful and positive to learn techniques online, and you do not entirely have the perspective to know that social media is negatively perpetuating your disease. I’m all for hearing the kids’ perspective, but these are still kids, and I don’t think they all have the ability to objectively know what is good or bad for them, especially in the long term.
These are great points -- I agree that it's really important to listen to teens, but that there are certain questions we definitely can't answer from that info alone! And yes - in a future study would love to get into more details on what exactly helpful vs harmful mental health content might look like. Content that may seem "helpful" can certainly veer into "harmful" territory when it leads to inaccurate self-diagnoses (I wrote about this a bit a couple months ago - https://technosapiens.substack.com/p/mentalhealthtiktok). Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
Autism is massively underdiagnosed in girls and women so if they are learning they have it from tiktok they are more likely to get the support they need. The harm of not realising you are autistic can be life-threatening.
On the other hand, if neurotypical girls become convinced they are autistic, what is the actual harm?
Thanks for reporting on this. I recently wrote a post 'TikTok brain cure with three ingredients' https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/tiktok-brain-cure-with-three-ingredients which focuses on the role that school, parents, and 'getting real' can play in helping youth stay grounded in reality. While girls may report 'positive experiences', the amount of time spent on digital devices is eating away from time that used to be spent in real-life relationships and activities. Thus I think it is less about fixing social media and more about weaning off devices and apps that are specifically designed to exploit addictive tendencies.
Thank you for this! I love hearing from girls themselves! I’ve been deeply concerned by elements of sexism that I see in the coverage of this topic (not here!) and by the way girls’ voices are erased from public discourse. We are so quick to rob girls of autonomy in the name of “protection.” It was a delight to hear what girls themselves think.
I wonder if you have noticed some of this sexist coverage and if you have thoughts about it? I feel concerned as a woman who knows how fast we will limit girls (if we think talk of girls’ mental health won’t soon be used to “protect” girls from information about abortion, birth control, and “woke” content, we haven’t been paying attention very well). I also feel concerned, as the mother of a boy, that we are still far too comfortable with the suicide rate of boys. In many places where this discussion is taking place, people seem to look at the overall higher rate of suicide among boys and shrug. It’s as if we accept suicide among boys as part of our overall acceptance of violence among boys and men.
Thanks again for letting us hear from the girls! I deeply appreciate your discussions on this subject!
I agree with you - I do worry sometimes that our approaches to thinking about girls' mental health are sometimes rooted in our (often sexist) notions of what girls "can/can't handle," and that we are often too quick to dismiss how much boys are struggling, too.
Wow this was such an interesting read, thanks for sharing! Social media seems inevitable in the life of teen girls these days, so I'm happy to see that the girls do feel like they are reaping some positive benefits from it.
I do wonder about the extra security and privacy features - as it's all retrospective does that make it harder to encourage teens to use them? Like if they're used to free reign on YouTube, will they be willing to add parental controls? Really interesting topic, thanks for sharing.
It's a great question! I imagine many of these changes will need to be implemented by platforms themselves, and over time, they'll just become part of the expected experience - but it is definitely tough when all of this is evolving in real time.
Can I ask why the age was so limited and not broadened to up to early 20’s. Female social media users that are 16-25 can provide a different perspective and may give more in-depth answers to open ended questions.
Great question! It was really a sample size issue - we figured that there would be pretty big differences between early adolescent and late adolescent women in how they use social media, and since we already wanted to segment the sample in a number of other ways (i.e., by race/ethnicity, income, level of depressive symptoms, etc.) we were concerned those group sizes would get too small to be meaningful if we further segmented it by early vs late adolescents. Also, since a lot of the conversation about girls' social media use has been focused on younger adolescents, we figured that was a good place to start. A future study will be needed for the older age group!
As a pediatrician, I really struggle with the belief that access to mental health information and resources and information is all positive. I have countless typically-developing teenagers (mostly girls) coming to me wondering if they have autism or ADHD because of information they have encountered on TikTok. I also have teenagers coming to me talking about how they are “dissociating,” a term which, as far as I can tell, they are learning online. You can’t all be dissociating at once, people! I am also wondering about whether kids who are truly in the thick of social media can really discern what is good or bad. Like if you have an eating disorder, perhaps it is helpful and positive to learn techniques online, and you do not entirely have the perspective to know that social media is negatively perpetuating your disease. I’m all for hearing the kids’ perspective, but these are still kids, and I don’t think they all have the ability to objectively know what is good or bad for them, especially in the long term.
These are great points -- I agree that it's really important to listen to teens, but that there are certain questions we definitely can't answer from that info alone! And yes - in a future study would love to get into more details on what exactly helpful vs harmful mental health content might look like. Content that may seem "helpful" can certainly veer into "harmful" territory when it leads to inaccurate self-diagnoses (I wrote about this a bit a couple months ago - https://technosapiens.substack.com/p/mentalhealthtiktok). Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
Autism is massively underdiagnosed in girls and women so if they are learning they have it from tiktok they are more likely to get the support they need. The harm of not realising you are autistic can be life-threatening.
On the other hand, if neurotypical girls become convinced they are autistic, what is the actual harm?
Thanks for reporting on this. I recently wrote a post 'TikTok brain cure with three ingredients' https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/tiktok-brain-cure-with-three-ingredients which focuses on the role that school, parents, and 'getting real' can play in helping youth stay grounded in reality. While girls may report 'positive experiences', the amount of time spent on digital devices is eating away from time that used to be spent in real-life relationships and activities. Thus I think it is less about fixing social media and more about weaning off devices and apps that are specifically designed to exploit addictive tendencies.
Thank you for this! I love hearing from girls themselves! I’ve been deeply concerned by elements of sexism that I see in the coverage of this topic (not here!) and by the way girls’ voices are erased from public discourse. We are so quick to rob girls of autonomy in the name of “protection.” It was a delight to hear what girls themselves think.
I wonder if you have noticed some of this sexist coverage and if you have thoughts about it? I feel concerned as a woman who knows how fast we will limit girls (if we think talk of girls’ mental health won’t soon be used to “protect” girls from information about abortion, birth control, and “woke” content, we haven’t been paying attention very well). I also feel concerned, as the mother of a boy, that we are still far too comfortable with the suicide rate of boys. In many places where this discussion is taking place, people seem to look at the overall higher rate of suicide among boys and shrug. It’s as if we accept suicide among boys as part of our overall acceptance of violence among boys and men.
Thanks again for letting us hear from the girls! I deeply appreciate your discussions on this subject!
I agree with you - I do worry sometimes that our approaches to thinking about girls' mental health are sometimes rooted in our (often sexist) notions of what girls "can/can't handle," and that we are often too quick to dismiss how much boys are struggling, too.
Wow this was such an interesting read, thanks for sharing! Social media seems inevitable in the life of teen girls these days, so I'm happy to see that the girls do feel like they are reaping some positive benefits from it.
I do wonder about the extra security and privacy features - as it's all retrospective does that make it harder to encourage teens to use them? Like if they're used to free reign on YouTube, will they be willing to add parental controls? Really interesting topic, thanks for sharing.
It's a great question! I imagine many of these changes will need to be implemented by platforms themselves, and over time, they'll just become part of the expected experience - but it is definitely tough when all of this is evolving in real time.
This is great. Thanks for diving into this research for all of us. And the NYT shoutout, congrats!
Thanks Kevin!!
Can I ask why the age was so limited and not broadened to up to early 20’s. Female social media users that are 16-25 can provide a different perspective and may give more in-depth answers to open ended questions.
Great question! It was really a sample size issue - we figured that there would be pretty big differences between early adolescent and late adolescent women in how they use social media, and since we already wanted to segment the sample in a number of other ways (i.e., by race/ethnicity, income, level of depressive symptoms, etc.) we were concerned those group sizes would get too small to be meaningful if we further segmented it by early vs late adolescents. Also, since a lot of the conversation about girls' social media use has been focused on younger adolescents, we figured that was a good place to start. A future study will be needed for the older age group!