A Saudi study reveals the negative impact of “TikTok” on mental health
A study published in an e-book recently released by the Ministry of Information in Saudi Arabia, entitled “Social Media and its Impact on Public Health and Mental Health in Saudi Arabia”, highlights the results of an extensive study that included more than 13,000 participants from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and all its administrative regions. The book focused on studying the use of social media platforms, such as: Twitter, Snapchat, Tik Tok and Instagram, and their relationship to public health and mental health. The book also focused in the first section of it on describing the spread of the use of social communication in Saudi Arabia among the different classes of society, whether age groups, income level, educational level and gender.
The book began by explaining the reason for the study that with the increasing use of social media all over the world, as some social media platforms have reached high levels of the proportion of the population in terms of daily use in many countries. With higher levels of users, and higher levels of user interaction on these platforms, social media platforms have recently attracted a lot of controversy over their impact on many social topics, including health and behavioral effects and specifically their effects on mental health.
قمنا بالبحث عن العديد من المقالات العلمية المنشورة والتي تدرس الروابط بين وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي والصحة العقلية والنفسية، ووجدنا معظمها كانت منخفضة الجودة من ناحية التصميم والمنهجية العلمية وأن الأدلة التي توصلوا إليها غير حاسمة. في مراجعة علمية أخرى تدرس العلاقة بين وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي والسمنة أظهرت العديد من الآثار الإيجابية المحتملة لاستخدام هذه المنصات بشكل أكبر من الآثار السلبية! ومن هنا بدأت الدراسات والبحوث بالتعمق في هذا الموضوع للوصول لدليل علمي عالي الجودة ينهي الجدل حول علاقة وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي بالصحة النفسية والصحة العامة.
After analyzing the data using the “Regression analysis” methodology, in which a statistical model was built that controls the influence of age, gender, and the interaction between the use of different social media, the study found that there is no relationship for most social media with depression or anxiety. However, daily TikTok users showed a 26% higher risk of depression than non-daily users. Also, users of “TikTok” on a daily basis showed a higher risk of anxiety by “33%” than users on a non-daily basis. Other platforms have also shown a positive association with mental health. The book clarified that this correlation does not mean that the use of these platforms increases the risk of depression or anxiety, and touched on the interpretation of this result with the theory of random groups, where the way we use these platforms affects the quality of individuals attracted by these platforms and the way in which these individuals are affected. The book recommended that users of these platforms can be targeted with awareness programs for mental health, especially anxiety and depression.