Dr. TikTok - Part 2
You might remember one of my previous blogs – The Doctor (TikTok) is Not In – where I wrote about the dangers that can sometimes accompany the internet self-diagnosis trap that seems to have boomed in a brand new way through social media beyond the days of WebMD.
Welcome to Part 2! While the Doctor might not be in – the community it seems, is.
We all remember deciding not to self-diagnose from social media posts, yes? One of the other things that we actually can do and benefit from when it comes to social media is relating to a post.
Influencers become influencers because they either live such lavish lifestyles that the voyeuristic side of ourselves wants to watch and see how the 1% live, or because we see ourselves in what an influencer or creator might share with us – they’re just like you or me!
We all know the cautions, dangers, and drama that can come from social media; when apps like TikTok are used properly we also get communities, access to information, and entertainment. Social media has great potential in what we can learn, experience, and all of the fun and exciting content that we can consume.
The benefit of the communities that can and have been created through social media platforms is that where you once may have felt alone or isolated, at times ignored by professionals, or the shame of societal or internalized stigma you can now access people on the internet who create or consume content that feels like it was made with you in mind.
More than once a therapy session has started with a client excitedly telling me that they saved a TikTok to show me while moving to hold their phone up to the camera.
“This!” – they’ll say – “This is exactly what I was saying!”.
More than once a therapy session has been primarily centered around the content of a TikTok or other social media post. If you have found something on social media that makes you feel seen, feel heard, and feel not so alone in your thoughts then I absolutely am excited to see it as your therapist.
My mind jumps to TikTok creator Chris Olsen who has some clips of himself sitting in therapy – videos that again, have come up more than once in a therapy session. I see these 30 to 60 second clips and have to assume these are the thoughts that might follow for many people:
“Okay, therapy doesn’t seem too bad.”
“I wonder if I’ll be able to make my therapist laugh?”
“Oh…. I can talk about that?!”
All you have to do is open the comment section on one of Chris’ videos to find the community of people laughing along and commenting their therapist’s name to apologize for their own antics in sessions (tongue in cheek of course), a nugget of learning from their own therapy, the remark “why is this me?”, or some other way of sharing how relatable the video content is.
Sure, social media content is intentionally relatable – this isn’t inherently bad. Seeing a post and finding commonality or community through it though is a far cry from self-diagnosis from a social media post.
In a world where mental healthcare is often inaccessible due to waitlists, lack of funding, financial and geographical barriers (I could go on) - social media while not being a replacement for professional care has become a sort of resource library of information and communities that many folks wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
Without proper access to resources and mental health diagnosticians some people go an entire lifetime misdiagnosed, underdiagnosed, or even with overdiagnoses. These phenomena are often higher in populations such as Racialized folks, Queer folks, and women who are all populations that are already trying to contend with living in a world and society that was not built with them in mind which is a pressure that can already lead to worse overall mental health outcomes.
There are certainly both benefits and limitations to accurate diagnosis from a qualified professional. A major benefit is that diagnosis is often the gatekeeper to certain mental health resources, programming, and supports; the limitation on this point being that due to gatekeeping, without a diagnosis you may not be able to access those same types of resources, programming, and supports that could have still been helpful.
Here we have the perfect cocktail of inaccessible mental health care due to both structural and individual barriers, improper or unavailable diagnoses, lack of access to healthcare, and gatekeeping to make for worse overall mental health outcomes for various populations.
Where social media swoops in here is that the gatekeeper to consuming social media content is internet access and an account to that platform. So here we have a much more common space where we can see content, remark how similar it is to us – NOT diagnose ourselves – and hopefully get some tips and tricks to cope with whatever common challenge might exist between ourselves and the creator.
You don’t have to be diagnosed with or even meet the threshold of diagnosis for something like ADHD for attention related behavioural interventions to be effective in helping you do focused work.
At your fingertips you suddenly have access to new resources and skills, a type of access that never existed before the surge of social media. You absolutely still need to be discerning about the type of content that you consume, and to think critically about the information that you gather from and share to social media.
Are our socials inherently good or bad? No. Can we take things from them, both good and bad? Yes.
The doctor is not in – but the community most certainly is.