INTRODUCTION
Social media is a popular source of medical information.1 Approximately 45% of individuals report that social media plays a role in their decision to seek medical care from a healthcare provider.2 TikTok is a video-based application with more than two billion downloads since 2016, making it the fastest growing social media platform in the world.1 A recent study found psoriasis to be among one of the most viewed dermatologic diseases on TikTok.3 However, there is limited data about psoriasis treatment content on this social media platform. Given TikTok's increasing popularity, influence on health behaviors, and high viewership of psoriasis videos, it is necessary to characterize psoriasis content on this platform. The objective of this study is to compare the viewer engagement, quality, and viewer experience of TikTok videos relating to psoriasis and psoriasis treatment between physicians and nonphysicians.
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis by performing a TikTok search of the terms psoriasis and psoriasis treatment. The top 120 videos that met the inclusion criteria were included in the analysis. Videos were included if they were related to psoriasis treatment, contained text or audio, and were in English. Videos included in the analysis were uploaded between March 28, 2020, and March 30, 2022. Viewer engagement was assessed using the following ratio: (number of comments + likes)/views. Content quality was evaluated utilizing the validated DISCERN instrument, a tool that analyzes consumer health information using a scale of one extensive shortcomings to five minimal shortcomings.4 The Armstrong Viewer Assessment (AVA) assessed viewer experience using a scale of zero=poor to four=very good. Content quality and viewer experience were evaluated by two independent raters. Two-tailed t-tests were used to compare mean DISCERN and AVA scores between physician and non-physician content creators. The threshold for significance was set at 0.05. The top 120 psoriasis videos had 94,478,771 views, 4,433,402 comments, and 40,137 comments (Table 1). Videos were created by non-physicians (61.7%), physicians (21.7%), and private, skincare companies (16.7%; Table 1).
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis by performing a TikTok search of the terms psoriasis and psoriasis treatment. The top 120 videos that met the inclusion criteria were included in the analysis. Videos were included if they were related to psoriasis treatment, contained text or audio, and were in English. Videos included in the analysis were uploaded between March 28, 2020, and March 30, 2022. Viewer engagement was assessed using the following ratio: (number of comments + likes)/views. Content quality was evaluated utilizing the validated DISCERN instrument, a tool that analyzes consumer health information using a scale of one extensive shortcomings to five minimal shortcomings.4 The Armstrong Viewer Assessment (AVA) assessed viewer experience using a scale of zero=poor to four=very good. Content quality and viewer experience were evaluated by two independent raters. Two-tailed t-tests were used to compare mean DISCERN and AVA scores between physician and non-physician content creators. The threshold for significance was set at 0.05. The top 120 psoriasis videos had 94,478,771 views, 4,433,402 comments, and 40,137 comments (Table 1). Videos were created by non-physicians (61.7%), physicians (21.7%), and private, skincare companies (16.7%; Table 1).
