Swiping Away Your Well-Being? Examining Well-Being Indicators Among TikTok Account Holders

Abstract

Social media platforms continue to increase in popularity and number. Although many associations between social media and user health interactions have been explored, little to no research has investigated TikTok, a recently released social media platform, and its individual interactions with user mental and physical well-being variables. To address this gap, we administered an online questionnaire to a group of college students (n = 407) at Brigham Young University – Idaho about their social media use, mental, and physical well-being. We observed potential differences among TikTok account holders and non-TikTok users using a series of independent-samples t tests with Bonferroni correction. Although TikTok account holders reported higher negative mental well-being indicators than their nonuser counterparts in almost all measured areas, these relationships were only consistent among female TikTok account holders. Conversely, our findings of significantly higher reported consumption of sugary drinks across our entire sample, t(403) = 3.41, p = .001, d = 0.33, only maintained significance among male participants, t(141) = 3.04, p < .001, d = 0.50. As such, female TikTok account holders reported consistently worse mental health and well-being indicators than non-TikTok users. Building on our findings, we call for future research to better understand the nature of these relationships for both TikTok and other social media users’.