Monday marked world mental health day, and like many influencers who took to their platforms to commend the day and continue their ongoing continuation to raise awareness of the issues, TikTok has joined in on the conversation by providing their users with tools to better manage cyber health.
To mark the event, TikTok has launched a new “Mental Well-Being Comes First” campaign alongside the app’s internal and existing well-being resources to help raise awareness of the importance of managing mental health through newfound mental issues linked with digital platforms.
Together with the campaign and to mark the mental health event, TikTok even launched accompanying insight research of how people feel towards mental health concerns, and the support options available to them.
It’s important for social platforms to provide users with the right tools to manage mental health issues that can arise from their platform
“To further nurture TikTok’s environment of empathy and understanding, we brought together some of our community’s favorite creators with mental health experts to empower them to create responsible content around mental well-being. These creators learned how to talk about sensitive issues, like grief and eating disorder recovery, to build a better understanding around creating content on sensitive topics of mental well-being.”
TikTok went ahead to partner with famous stars of the platform, to further spread awareness and initiate community conversations around mental health, all while attempting to break down limiting barriers of the negative stigmas surrounding mental health.
As you can see in the above images, the initiative also includes links to TikTok’s mental health guides and tools, providing more ways for people to get immediate assistance and advice when dealing with such concerns within the app.
In addition to their newly launched campaign, TikTok revealed information sourced from a market survey done in partnership with YouGov, to better understand how TikTok users feel about mental health and to further the idea that there are still stigmas in society hindering users to use the platform to talk freely about it. This is why TikTok is keen to implement resources to help open up the conversation.
Given its ever-increasing reach and influence, it’s important for TikTok to make mental health a focus, especially given the pressures that creators often feel, as well as the negative impacts of online comments and responses. Not even to mention the vulnerability some users face when dealing with social anxiety for their inability to differentiate between fake realities that have been curated to look perfect in an online world.
The danger of posting publicly, which is the default, on a platform that has one of the highest profile exposure rates for users, is that it opens you up to a potentially huge audience, at least some of whom are likely to have negative things to say about your efforts. And because it’s public, those comments can be seen by everybody, which can weigh them more heavily in your mind in regards to how people perceive you and your work, and even what that might mean for your future prospects.
Some of these pressures of the dark side of social media can become overwhelming, especially when you are trying to brand a name for yourself and cultivate a large following. Making mental health a key area for all social platforms that focus on reach and broad user engagement to factor into their development, and provide as much support as they can to their users.
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