A Scoping Review of TikTok's potential effects on the individual user from a psychological and cognitive perspective

Brogaard, Jeppe Juul

4. term

Psychology, Master

2025

2025-01-01

49 pages

Abstract Background Mostly focused on teens, both media and research has investigated the social media platform TikTok, which focuses on short-form videos as its content. Concerns have been raised about both its potential ties to the Chinese government in congruence with user privacy in the West, but also persistent worries whether usage of the app poses similar or a different kind of psychological risk as other established platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X. Objective This study follows the PRISMA Scoping Review protocol, to explore the current peer-reviewed literature on the subject to determine if there is cause to worry about TikTok’s potential effects based on reviewing the literatures methods, mapping out which authors, countries and journals are most prominent in the research and discovering both the most used keywords in the research, but also the themes that the specific articles delve into and revolve around, as to shed light upon potential positive, neutral or negative psychological effects seen in the included literature. Design The Scoping Review search was conducted on the scientific research database Scopus while limited to including research articles from psychological journals, with the requirement of being peer-reviewed English, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian language articles. Articles were per the launch of TikTok naturally limited to be within the timeframe of 2015-2024, which prompted the discovery of 217 articles prior to filtering and later screening, eventually ending up with 46 articles from primarily The United States and China, but also Thailand, Turkey, Canada, Italy, Spain, Chile, Belgium, Austria, Australia, United Kingdom, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, Macao, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Peru, Taiwan and Denmark deemed relevant for the answering of the research questions. Results With regards to the articles’ spread of themes a considerable part of the research (32.61%) were related to the concept of Problematic Use, while the second largest focus involved a more general focus on the possible effect on user’s wellbeing (26.09%). Of the two most prevalent subjects, the third and fourth most present in the included articles were user motivation (19.57%) and exploration of the role of social attachment on smartphone and social media use respectively (15.22%). Themes regarding the concepts of self-perception and learning engagement/communication were both at a lower percentage (6.52% each), while the last two identified themes of social learning and very operationalized cognitive inquiries amounted to 2 articles each, in the Included 46 articles (4.35% each). Conclusions The research on TikTok mirrors a lot of the previous research done on similar social media platforms, with both possibilities and risks being present. As is suggested by the APA, several ethical design choices could be made to avoid some of the risks it poses to especially the mental health of youth. Overall, the platforms’ algorithmic and fast-paced design may risk outcomes such as problematic use of the app or depressive symptoms, perhaps warranting looking into the other platforms adopting the short-form video format like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Psykologi ; TikTok ; Kognitiv ; Effekt

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