JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Experiencing a traumatic event can detrimentally affect a person’s mental and emotional wellbeing. An online space can be a place to share stories, a tool to seek or provide support, or a source of psychoeducation for individuals impacted by trauma. TikTok has become an increasingly popular social media platform to source advice, validation and information regardless of user credibility. Research is needed to better understand TikTok content relating to trauma and the implications to young viewers.

Objective:

Thus, the current study explores the content of trauma-related videos, via hashtags relating to trauma, on TikTok.

Methods:

A quantitative cross-sectional descriptive content analysis was performed whereby five hashtags with the most views relating to trauma on TikTok were selected and the top 50 videos from each hashtag were sampled: #trauma, #traumatized, #traumatok, #traumatic and #traumabond (total n=250 videos). A standardised codebook was developed to analyse the content of the videos and the metadata for each video was also collected (likes, comments and shares).

Results:

The results showed two major content themes in videos relating to trauma: instructional videos (21.6%) and those that allowed users to disclose their personal stories (67.3%).

Conclusions:

The results of this study have several public health implications, including negative implications such as risk of vicarious traumatization, risk of inaccurate information being spread, and exacerbation of mental health issues. Positive implications can include increased social connection, validation and reduced stigma for individuals who have mental health issues.