Previously submitted to: JMIR Infodemiology (no longer under consideration since Mar 31, 2026)
Date Submitted: Sep 25, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Information about Antidepressants for Young People on Instagram and TikTok : Cross-sectional Analysis of Content Quality and Reliability
ABSTRACT
Background:
Access to accurate and appropriate information is essential to support treatment adherence and compliance. In a context marked by both the increasing use of antidepressants among young people and the rise of social media, adolescents and young adults are increasingly turning to Instagram and TikTok for health information, exposing themselves to the risk of misinformation. This trend highlights the importance of evaluating the quality of drug-related content shared on these platforms.
Objective:
To assess the quality and reliability of information about antidepressants for young people on the social media platforms Instagram and TikTok.
Methods:
A cross-sectional analysis of 200 French-language publications (100 from each platform) was conducted using the DISCERN scale, along with additional measures for accuracy, promotion of adherence and audience. The evaluations were performed by three independent evaluators. Descriptive and univariate analysis were carried out to compare the characteristics of information between the two media platforms according to the ‘s qualification.
Results:
The overall quality was considered as "mediocre" (DISCERN score = 32.0±10.5) with health professionals providing significantly of higher quality, more reliable, more accurate, and more likely to promote adherence than non-health professionals (p<0.001). The misinformation rate was of 23.6% and 30.7% of publications discouraged drug adherence. The main topics addressed were the effectiveness of antidepressants (27.3%) and their adverse effects (23.9%), with the most common being weight gain, withdrawal syndrome, and sexual dysfunction.
Conclusions:
This study reveals an unsatisfactory quality of information about antidepressants aimed at young people via media social, with a worrying proportion of misinformation. These results highlight the need for initiatives to promote the dissemination of accurate and reliable information in order to improve the effectiveness of antidepressants and prevent their risks. Clinical Trial: no applicable
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.