Kids in Crisis: Social media therapy is trending but it poses potential danger
"Social media therapy" is trending on TikTok, with the hashtag "mental health" having been searched more than 67 billion times.
Samantha Fridley said, "Originally it was more I was just looking for, like, mental health advocacy."
The search then became a serious problem for Fridley.
"It turned into diagnosis," said Fridley.
As a high schooler who was already seeing a therapist for anxiety and depression, Fridley watched countless videos of influencers sharing thoughts on mental health conditions. TikTok then flooded her feed with hundreds more.
Fridley said, "It made it a lot worse. My anxiety was constantly like, 'Well, if I have this, then like, what if I have this? People are going to look at me like I'm crazy.'"
She soon started to believe she was bipolar, had borderline personality disorder, and ADHD.
According to The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry's analysis of popular TikTok videos about ADHD, 52% were deemed misleading.
"It just got to a point where I was losing sleep because of it. I would be up until, like, 3 a.m. on TikTok, just, like, researching."
The videos in her "For You" feed were picked for her by TikTok's unique algorithm, based on what she had searched, shared, and liked.
In a recent study, researchers posed as 13-year-old users, and searched and liked mental health videos. They said TikTok pushed potentially harmful content on an average of every 39 seconds. Within 2.6 minutes of joining the app, some of the "teens" were shown content about suicide.
Enter Dr. Inna Kanevsky.
She may not look like your typical influencer, but this professor at San Diego's Mesa College has become TikTok famous. She has more than a million followers, and she did it by debunking mental health misinformation - one video at a time.
Dr. Kanevsky said, "You can give people advice based on your experience. As long as you're clear that that's where you're coming from. 'Did you know that this is what it is like? If you are autistic, you do this. If you have depression, you do this.' So, it's not it may be informed by my personal experience, but that's not what they're making it sound like."
While her videos have 36 million likes, Dr. Kanevsky said she can't get TikTok to take down content that she has flagged.
She said, "I've talked even to people a TikTok, and I kept saying, you know, at some point, I know you only care about misinformation if it's COVID, or politics. You don't care about misinformation, about psychology, but you have to understand this is mental health."
TikTok's headquarters in Los Angeles declined an interview to discuss their algorithm and the mental health content that is being pushed to young users. They did, however, email a statement, saying that they are "testing ways to avoid recommending a series of similar content on topics".
They also wrote that they "... strongly encourage people to get professional medical advice" and that they "... remove harmful information regardless of intent."
Samantha Fridley has had to check out and detox from social media. She spent 56 days in residential rehab, where there's no phone or TikTok allowed.
She said, "Um, I don't use if for information anymore. Or, you know, finding a diagnosis or finding, like, an illness. Like I use it for, you know, kind of like a form of, like comedy, like there's funny videos on there."
There is a strategy you can use if your feed is flooded with negative posts. Watching, liking, and commenting on positive posts can help displace the negative content. You can also simply delete your account and start from scratch.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, get help from the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
There are also other resources on our website you can refer to.
Related: Watch an exclusive documentary called "Connecting The Dots", where young people from around the world talk about their struggles with mental health.