“We Should Be Talking About This More”

An Empirical Examination of Stress-related Content on TikTok

Abstract

Recent research has revealed that popular social media platforms are emerging as crucial digital health sources for individuals across demographics, but more so for adolescents and young adults (Lupton, 2021; McCashin & Murphy, 2022; Montag et al., 2021). ΤikTok is the latest social networking tool said to be functioning as a source of informal mental health communication and is increasingly being utilized for giving and seeking advice, sharing information and personal stories about the symptoms, effects, challenges, and coping strategies related to stress and anxiety, among other mental health issues (McCashin & Murphy, 2022). Despite the rapid growth of TikTok-based research, investigations of mental health-relevant content on this platform are still very few. The current study aims to contribute to this body of research through a content analysis of the most popular TikTok videos labelled with pertinent hashtags, namely #anxiety, #stress, and #stressrelief. The aim is to map the practices through which TikTok content creators appropriate the platform’s affordances in order to create content and generate interactions around a focal object of common concern. The analysis focuses on diverse aspects of the platform’s use as a medium for creating stress- and anxiety-related content, including the content creator identity and presentation, video format, type and purpose, audience engagement levels, as well as reported sources, symptoms, consequences, and coping techniques of stress and anxiety. The examination of TikTok user practices offers insights into the evolving patterns of consumption and production of digital content, and cultural production in a social media context.