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The TikTokification of Mental Health on Campus
With all the recent coverage of the youth mental health crisis and the role of social media, little attention has been given to the way platforms like TikTok promote certain narratives about mental health—shifting not only the conversation but also the way mental health issues are actually experienced.Young adults on college campuses and elsewhere are being persuaded to interpret their everyday lives through the lens of mental illness as algorithms target them repeatedly with ads and other content. The result is a form of “marketing” that encourages self-diagnosis and the embrace of disorders as identity by watering down the definition of mental suffering—and, paradoxically, minimizing understanding and compassion for those who are truly struggling.
Just ask the students themselves. In conversations with 19 college students and recent graduates around the country and the world, they expressed concern about their generation’s norms for discussing mental health and the way these norms disrupt their ability to cope.
“If somebody had a tough day, I think they’re more likely now to say, ‘My mental health has been rough,’ or use that sort of terminology, than they would have five years ago,” says Veronica, a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. For Veronica and other college students, psychiatric terms pop up everywhere: conversations with friends, emails from their universities, and even discussions about characters in literature classes.
“I guess it’s just more ambient now,” Veronica suggests.
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The TikTokification of Mental Health on Campus
Social media feeds reflect identities—and when posts center on a specific diagnosis, it can feel like the platform is diagnosing us.