Investigators have assessed the quality of acne-related content on the social media platform TikTok, according to a new cross-sectional analysis published by Irfan et al in Cureus. Investigators used the hashtag #acne to identify the top 100 most-liked videos on the platform and examined the videos’ popularity, quality, engagement, and content creator diversity. The 38 videos from that group that were posted by physicians received higher mean views, likes, comments, shares, and favorites compared with the 29 videos that were posted by nonphysicians. Similar results were observed among videos posted by dermatologists and nondermatologists—highlighting that experts may be more trusted on TikTok than other creators. They then examined the quality of the videos using the DISCERN tool and discovered that videos sharing personal experiences achieved the highest scores; however, DISCERN scores were low for most of the video categories. The investigators hope their findings can help guide and improve public health education on TikTok—and emphasized that reliable, evidence-based information is the key to effective health communication on the platform.


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