Over half of TikTok videos under #mentalhealthtips contain misleading or false advice.

Question

A recent report found that when reviewing the top trending 100 videos on TikTok tagged with “#mentalhealthtips,” more than half were found to contain misleading or inaccurate information about mental‐health practices. People.com This is particularly relevant for college students, many of whom turn to social media for quick, shareable wellness hacks or peer advice. The claim draws attention to the gap between content that looks helpful and content that may mislead, especially when it comes to serious mental-health issues.

It’s important to fact-check because misleading mental-health content can cause harm: self-diagnosis, skipping professional help, or spreading unvetted tips that may worsen conditions rather than help them. While the claim states “over half,” the nuance is that the review covered trending videos under one hashtag and may not represent all content on the platform, but the pattern is strong enough to warrant caution.

Answer 1

It does seem that there is some truth behind this. I was able to find an article by the University of Chicago that was also stating the same thing. "Around 44% of the videos contained non-factual information. Videos from “nonmedical influencers” ". i was also able to find an article by Plushcare that said "83.7% of mental health advice on TikTok is misleading. While 14.2% of videos include content that could be potentially damaging." and "While experts concluded that 54% of advice contained accurate information, 31% of videos contained inaccurate information.". It seems a lot of the mental health content on Tiktok is done by non-professionals and then gets quickly spread. So I would call this true for the most part with the numbers ranging from a little under half to a bit over depending on how the research was done. 

https://biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/news/health-information-tiktok 

https://plushcare.com/blog/tiktok-mental-health 

Answer 2

This claim is true. The claim is that a large percentage of mental health "tips" on TikTok are false and misleading. The source article from People Magazine speaks about how there is misleading information on TikTok, often leading vulnerable and impressionable youth to self-diagnose and believe false information about their mental health. I found an article by The Guardian (along with many reliable journals and news sites) supporting this claim. They say that TikTok videos provide many "solutions" or "explanations" to different mental health struggles, and over half of them are misleading or false. They state that 52 out of 100 videos regarding mental health contained misleading and even harmful information. All of this definitely supports this claim.

Hall, R., & Keenan, R. (2025, May 31). More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/31/more-than-half-of-top-100-mental-health-tiktoks-contain-misinformation-study-finds

Answer 3

I agree with this true statement, reading new york times, it said how instead of turning to friends and talking about how they are feeling, they turn to TikTok, hearing what TikTok is saying, and then agreeing because what they are going through tiktok is saying it, and then giving you tips on what to do. " But if you're organized and you have structure and you like things a certain way and you're functioning, you don't have obsessive compulsive disorder - you're organized," Ms. barsch said said. "People who have O.C.D cannot function because of their compulsions. (New York Times).

Comments

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/well/mind/tiktok-mental-illness-diagnosis.html