242 - Friday Fix: 7 Worst Mental Health Tips on Social Media

The Verywell Mind Podcast

Dotdash Media Inc.

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Mental Health, Education

5 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many people go online to seek positive affirmations, mental health tips, and strategies for building mental strength. Unfortunately, many social media tips on improving mental health aren’t accurate, and some strategies can be downright damaging. Many slogans, mantras, and tips just aren’t correct. But these pieces of bad mental health advice can go viral if they sound catchy, get paired with some cool music, or appear in an amazing video. Whether we’re talking about Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, the more likes, comments, and shares a piece of content has, the more likely people are to believe it’s true. But just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s accurate. So here are some of the most common misconceptions about mental health, relationships, emotions, and human behavior that frequently get shared on social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.
0:22.9	This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.
0:45.6	Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix.
0:53.1	Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength strategy that can help fix the thoughts, feelings, and actions that can hold you back in life.
0:55.3	Today I'm talking about the mental health messages on social media that are popular but not helpful. There are a lot of
1:00.8	influential people who share messages on mental health that sound catchy or even inspirational
1:06.1	on the surface. But the information is actually not accurate. In fact, some of it's downright harmful.
1:14.3	Yet the quotes and the memes often spread like wildfire, and before you know it, tens of millions
1:19.1	of people are sharing misinformation. Obviously, this problem isn't unique to mental health.
1:25.1	The fitness industry and physical health sector have to deal with
1:28.2	the same problems. But to give you some insight into how widespread of a problem this is,
1:34.1	plush care, which is a virtual health and mental health app, did some research on this. They analyzed 500
1:40.8	TikTok videos that included hashtags, mental health tips or mental health advice.
1:47.0	The medical professionals who reviewed them assessed their advice for accuracy and risk.
1:52.1	Here's what they found.
1:53.9	84% of mental health advice on TikTok is misleading.
1:58.7	14% of the videos contained misinformation that could be damaging.
2:03.6	Only 9% of people offering mental health advice had any relevant qualifications.
2:09.6	And 31% of the videos contained inaccurate information.
2:14.2	Obviously, it's not just TikTok where we're seeing this happen.
2:17.7	It's a problem across all social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook.
2:23.1	And unfortunately, people tend to believe content that has a million likes or hundreds of comments must be true.
	...

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