ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Information quality of videos related to adolescent depression on social media platforms: a comparative study of TikTok and BiliBili
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Xiehe University, Jinan, China
- 2Shandong Mental Health Center, Jinan, China
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Background The incidents of adolescent depression has been increasing globally in recent years, raising concern among the public about this condition. Videos on adolescent depression are disseminated through TikTok and Bilibili, both of which have gained popularity in recent years as easily accessible sources of health information. However, no researchers have conducted professional inspection and evaluation of depression-related videos targeting adolescents, some of these videos may even disseminate misleading information. Methods We retrieved the top 100 adolescent depression related videos from TikTok and Bilibili. Data on video characteristics, including engagement metrics and content, were also collected. Video quality was assessed using three rating tools: the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Global Quality Score (GQS), and the Modified DISCERN (mDISCERN). The independent t-test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Kruskal–Wallis test were used for comparison and analysis. Results The analysis included 188 videos, with 95 from TikTok and 93 from Bilibili. TikTok videos were shorter and exhibited higher audience interaction. The most popular topic on TikTok and Bilibili was "Symptoms of adolescent depression". Video creators were predominantly experts on TikTok (72.63%), and general users on Bilibili (56.99%). Video quality, assessed using JAMA, GQS, and mDISCERN, varied across platforms. There are statistically significant differences in the three quality scores among different types of creators on TikTok and Bilibili (P<0.005). No significant differences were observed in views, likes, comments, and collections data across different video publishers on TikTok and Bilibili. Conclusions Videos on social media platforms can help the public gain knowledge about adolescent depression. However, the quality of video from all platforms requires improvement. Strengthening collaboration among content creators, mental health experts, and platform administrators may enhance video quality and ensure more accurate and effective dissemination of information.
Keywords: Adolescents depression, Social Media, Quality analysis, TikTok, Bilibili
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Kuang, Qi and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jingya Li, lijingya_123@126.com
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