To mark World Mental Health Day, the social media giant TikTok is using its immense reach to highlight the importance of mental health.
TikTok has conducted a mental well-being survey in South Africa to better understand its users in the market.
With the majority of the users spending most of their time online, mental health has taken a prominent place within public discourse, with several celebrities and public figures advocating for the destigmatisation of disorders such as anxiety and depression.
Popular online platforms such as TikTok play a significant role in helping mental health activists convey their messages and raise awareness of these pertinent issues, with the hashtag #mentalhealth sitting at nearly 50 billion views.
In collaboration with creators from around the world and its global community, TikTok has introduced “Mental Well-Being Comes First”, a global campaign to raise awareness of the importance of mental well-being, allow understanding of mental wellness and empower communities to break the stigma of talking about mental well-being.
Over the next month, TikTok will also run an initiative aimed at bringing mental health to the fore of online conversation and informing, empowering and inspiring its users.
TikTok Live discussions will take place during this period.
These initiatives are pivotal to furthering TikTok’s aims to be at the heart of these important conversations and to facilitate safe spaces for users to talk about and engage with mental health issues.
Commenting on this is Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda, head of public policy and government relations at TikTok in Africa, who explained: “As the world’s digital destination for community-driven entertainment, TikTok is about inspiring creativity and bringing joy. The mental well-being of our users is therefore of high priority. We will continue to use survey-based data and insights to inform our policies and product development in a way that normalises conversations around mental well-being and encourages principles like self-acceptance and self-care.”
Research conducted by TikTok in South Africa showed that the majority of online users in the country feel comfortable talking about their mental well-being and consider it to be just as important as physical health.
Two out of three survey respondents expressed an openness to being engaged about mental health issues by a social media community.
Over half of respondents mentioned that having access to free mental well-being tools and resources on their favourite social media platforms plays a role in making them feel more comfortable about speaking about mental health issues.
“Of particular interest to us was the fact that respondents belonging to older age groups and millennials seem more open to discussing the topic of mental health than Gen Zs. Almost 50% of millennials, however, expressed fear around being judged by friends and family if they were more open and publicly vocal about these issues. So, although the evidence suggests that the groundwork has been laid for more authentic conversations, there is still a long way to go. As an entertainment platform, we take our role in driving this positive change very seriously,” said Sibanda.