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For this year’s World Mental Health Day, TikTok shared an overview of their latest mental health support tools for their Creators. They also gave insights to brand new research about how people feel with regard to mental health concerns (and the support options available to them!). The first major development came with the latest in-app support tools. As well as the platform’s existing well-being resources, TikTok has launched a new ‘Mental Well-Being Comes First’ campaign, designed to help raise awareness of the importance of mental health, through dedicated in-app programming and tools. The resources, presented by some of TikTok’s most famous faces, have been put in place to help to spark more discussions around mental health – while also breaking down barriers around community perception. For a platform as big as TikTok, this is a big step forward! In addition to this, they have also conducted a global survey with YouGov to get a better sense of how TikTok users feel about mental health and how to best approach mental health concerns. The results found that there are still some concerning stigmas associated with mental health impacts, which is why TikTok is keen to provide even more support. As TikTok is fast becoming the most used platform among Gen-Z, these implications are massive and we’re glad to see that the platform is taking things seriously.
Deemed the “most depressing” of all social media platforms, Instagram is constantly under pressure to up its mental health initiatives. What’s more (similarly to TikTok), Instagram has a particularly young user base – so it’s extra important that this is a priority. One of the most significant issues that Instagram found among its users was that its content was perpetuating negative body image. To tackle this, the platform launched a new set of expert-backed resources, including contacts for local eating disorders hotlines, such as Beat in the UK, as well as new advice on how to build body confidence in partnership with the National Eating Disorders Association in the US. These resources are to be shown to users searching for terms related to disordered eating, as well as when users try to share this type of content, or if a friend is concerned about something they see posted and wants to offer support. Whether prompts such as these are actually successful is a whole other story, but it’s encouraging to see platforms flagging them up. Another major change came with the launch of Instagram Guides feature in May 2020, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic. These guides focus the feature on allowing select creators to work with mental health and wellbeing organisations to produce Guides containing positive, supportive content for users, such as how to practice mindfulness and self-care
YouTube, a platform accessed by over two billion users each month globally, inevitably has thousands of users who use the platform to search for channels that can give them advice for their health needs – be that information, community support or lifestyle advice. Also inevitable, many users will be doing this to learn about mental health, too. This is something that YouTube has decided to turn their attention to in light of Mental Health Day, teaming up with King’s College London and its partner partner NHS Trusts to connect viewers with advice from experts, debunk myths and signpost ways to get support. The aim of the new video series ‘Mind to Matter’ is to get to the truth about mental health directly from the experts, in one easy location. Topics include ‘What is Depression?’ and ‘Understanding Eating Disorders’, and are led by mental health professionals. According to Professor Richard Trembath, Senior Vice President (Health & Life Sciences) and Executive Director of King’s Health Partners, ‘This partnership represents innovation around health matters in practice. We are ensuring that the strengths and expertise of our mental health professionals reach the widest possible audience’. As far as initiatives go – this may be the wisest one yet.