Driven into Darkness: How TikTok’s ‘For You’ Feed Encourages Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation

This report, produced by Amnesty's International Secretariat, explores how TikTok’s design and content targeting systems affect children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Drawing on Amnesty International’s research, it examines how the platform’s highly personalised ‘For You’ feed can rapidly direct users who express an interest in mental health towards repeated streams of potentially harmful content.

The findings show that children and young people can be drawn into “rabbit holes” of videos that romanticise or encourage depressive thinking, self‑harm and suicide. In the context of growing evidence about the health risks associated with compulsive social media use, this report highlights how TikTok’s platform design risks exacerbating experiences of depression, anxiety and self‑harm.

Amnesty International’s research raises serious concerns about the impact of these systems on children and young people’s mental and physical health, and the extent to which TikTok is meeting its responsibility to respect their rights.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok emerged as a global platform, attracting hundreds of millions of children and young people largely thanks to its ‘For You’ page, an infinitely scrollable feed of personalized video suggestions, and the algorithmic recommender system behind it.

Through its seamless hyper-personalization, TikTok has created an addictive platform, despite mounting evidence of the serious health risks associated with children’s compulsive use of social media. Examining further risks of TikTok’s content targeting, Amnesty International’s research shows that TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed can easily draw children and young people who signal an interest in mental health into “rabbit holes” of potentially harmful content, including videos that romanticize and encourage depressive thinking, self-harm and suicide. TikTok risks exacerbating children and young people’s struggles with depression, anxiety and self-harm, putting young people’s mental and physical health at risk.

TikTok must urgently overhaul its data collection and amplification processes and undertake comprehensive human rights due diligence. However, individual actions by a single company are not sufficient to rein in a business model that is fundamentally incompatible with human rights. States must regulate “Big Tech” companies in line with international human rights law and standards to protect and fulfil children and young people’s rights.

Download and read the full report via the link above.