Early career researchers across The Kids Research Institute Australia have come together in a serendipitous project that is laying the groundwork for a more informed discussion of the impact of social media on kids and young people.
What started as an investigation into how energy drinks are marketed towards young people turned into a multi-team collaboration after Institute researchers realised there was no standardised way to conduct content analysis on TikTok.
TikTok – used mostly by children and young people – is the fastest growing social media channel across the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia. But the popular platform is marked by a lack of clear research on how it is used and the impact it has on its young users.
Researchers from the Brain and Behaviour, Chronic and Severe Diseases and Early Environment research areas set out to change that, working together to come up with a more effective way to analyse engagement on TikTok.
“We’d wanted to do TikTok research for ages, so while we were looking into energy drink advertising, we thought it was a perfect opportunity to collaborate and come up with a best-practice approach for analysis on the app,” chief investigator Dr Karen Lombardi said.
“TikTok united the team, and while we looked at different angles, fundamentally we were all working together.”
Project Coordinator and PhD candidate Joelie Mandzufas said it had quickly become apparent that while many young people were using TikTok as a source of information, it was difficult to determine what they were seeing and how they were reacting to it.
“We also thought that eventually the platform might be a great way to reach our audience with credible evidence-based information,” Ms Mandzufas said.
Supported by an internal Research Focus Area Collaboration grant of $50,000, a group of 19 mostly early career researchers (ECRs), spread across 12 teams, joined forces to publish a protocol that could be used to ensure content analysis across the app followed the same approach.
With the protocol paper published, the group split their efforts across mental health, parenting and physical health streams.
“I think the great buy-in from research groups across the Institute was primarily because we had a ready-made project which had already been piloted, and a clear research plan led by ECRs that would not be a significant time-burden and would work best with collaboration,” Ms Mandzufas said.
So far, papers have been published on the use by young people in the LGBTQIA+ community of TikTok as a means of building community; a harmful viral drinking trend by young TikTok users in the United States; and dieting behaviours found on the app.
Learnings from the work so far are already being disseminated via workshops and presentations to public health practitioners and researchers interstate and overseas.
Next steps
- Six more papers are expected to be published by the end of the year, with content analysis of TikTok videos focused on subjects including autism and ADHD, ear health, skin health and parenting tips
- The team is partnering with the University of Otago (NZ), which will base a student assessment on the protocol
- The team will develop a checklist identifying common elements across popular TikTok videos, for future health promotion
- The team plans to undertake a qualitative study exploring how people engage with mental health content on TikTok