Social Media and Medicine: Describing the views on mammograms and breast cancer screening on TikTok

Purpose: Healthcare professionals use TikTok to disseminate medical education, dispel misinformation, and offer advice. However, negative healthcare experiences portrayed on TikTok may inadvertently deter and mislead patients. TikTok may provide insight on the conversations about breast cancer screening that patients and their families have. There has been limited characterization of this topic in the literature thus far. Our goal was to describe TikTok video content about mammograms and breast cancer screening.

Methods/Materials: Apify, a free data-scraping tool, automatically extracted and compiled TikTok videos using frequently searched hashtags such as #mammogram, #breastcancerscreening, and #breastimaging. Inclusion criteria included relevant videos with English audio or text. Data on number of views and shares, video length, and content creator location were captured by the online app and imported onto REDCap for data storage. Two research team members independently viewed each video and recorded demographics on content creators, along with video characteristics and themes. The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) validated survey was used to evaluate videos' understandability and actionability.

Results: Of the 122 videos identified by Apify, 74 met inclusion criteria. Of these, 42% focused on mammograms and 23% shared breast cancer anecdotes. Radiologists made up 3% of content creators, while the majority (58%) were non-medical professionals. 53% of videos were characterized as educational, 43% were personal experiences, and 13.5% were humorous. Mean views and shares were 395,368 and 655, respectively. The top 3 countries represented were the US (81%), Canada (4%), and Great Britain (3%). Moreover, PEMAT scores showed an average of 78.8% for understandability and 38.3% for actionability.

Conclusions: TikTok videos reviewed in this study were found to be understandable and actionable. TikTok has the capacity to reach sociodemographic groups that may be less educated on breast cancer screening. Developing a targeted strategy for medical providers to use TikTok could enhance patient education, counseling, and support, thereby improving understanding of the importance of breast cancer screening.