ArticleCureus2022
Analysis of Acute Non-specific Back Pain Content on TikTok: An Exploratory Study.
Article in Cureus, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Development of Spinal Pain Beliefs: Patient Journey Mapping From Onset of Symptoms to MRI: A Qualitative Interview Study.Musculoskeletal care · 2026Article
- Social media best practices for the spine care professional.North American Spine Society journal · 2025Article
- Association between metabolic syndrome and low back pain: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The content quality and educational significance of early childhood caries on short video platforms.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Videos in short-video sharing platforms as sources of information on osteoarthritis: cross-sectional content analysis study.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Helpful or harmful? Navigating the impact of social media influencers' health advice: insights from health expert content creators.BMC public health · 2024Article
- An Evaluation of the Design of Multimedia Patient Education Materials in Musculoskeletal Health Care: Systematic Review.JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologies · 2024Review
- A new role for spinal manual therapy and for chiropractic? Part II: strengths and opportunities.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2024Article
- A Review of the Design of Multimedia Patient Educational Materials in Low Back Pain Research.Physical therapy research · 2024Review
- Quality and educational content of Douyin and TikTok short videos on early screening of rectal cancer.JGH open : an open access journal of gastroenterology and hepatology · 2023Article
- Adolescent Anxiety and TikTok: An Exploratory Study.Cureus · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction In this study, we evaluated the scope of acute non-specific back pain (ANSBP) content available on TikTok (ByteDance Ltd, Beijing, China) in 2021. It is plausible that TikTok's popularity among teenagers, adolescents, and young adults may influence decision-making about what constitutes appropriate ANSBP self-care among a younger age cohort. Methods We examined 157 of the most viewed videos available through the hashtag #backpain available on TikTok in September 2021. We examined the following research questions: (1) What are the metadata characteristics of the videos in the final data set?, (2) What are the creator identities reflected in the final data set in this study?, (3) What are the ANSBP self-care content themes in the final data set?, and (4) What are the characteristics of the data set based on a low back pain reference checklist based on consensus guidelines?. Results We identified clear differences based on TikTok creator identity in our data set of most popular videos. We examined videos created by chiropractors, fitness professionals, influencers, physicians, physiotherapists, and other creator identities. We found that the TikTok videos created by chiropractors were consistently among the most viewed, most commented, and most shared. Conversely, chiropractic TikTok videos consistently had the lowest self-care reference checklist scores relative to all other disciplines. That is, TikTok videos created by chiropractors were least likely to reflect the scientific consensus on treating ANSBP. Discussion TikTok is an increasingly popular medium for disseminating short health messages. The main cohort using TikTok is young and at risk of ANSBP. However, we postulate that the messages reaching young TikTok users overall do not generally reflect the self-care advice described in consensus guidelines. Conclusion TikTok is a popular social media channel among young people. However, the most viewed TikTok videos about ANSBP are not produced by mainstream health professionals and the videos featuring the #backpain hashtag do not generally reflect contemporary evidence-based practice. There is considerable scope for mainstream health professionals to provide evidence-informed self-management and self-care content for ANSBP on TikTok.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.