TikTok Announces Expanded Mental Health Support, Including Meditation Prompts In-App
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TikTok's looking to help you remain in a healthy frame of mind, with in-app guided meditation, and expanded support for mental health services, which will enable more users to get assistance as required via the app.
First off, on meditation. TikTok's rolling out a new guided meditation feature, which will take you through the meditation process in-app.
As you can see in these examples, TikTok's guided meditation will display animated on-screen prompts that you can follow along with, helping to regulate your breathing, and calm your mind.
The new function will be built into TikTok's sleep prompts, helping users take a break from the app.
As per TikTok:
'Research shows that mindful meditation can improve sleep quality in people of all ages, so we'll also introduce Meditation in Sleep Hours to all our users, regardless of their age. For teens under age 18, it will be turned on by default. If a teen decides to use TikTok after 10pm, their For You feed will be interrupted by a guided meditation exercise, helping them wind down for the night.'
So you'll now be nudged to stop scrolling and start relaxing, which TikTok says has proven beneficial this far:
'In our testing, 98% of the teens who meditated with TikTok decided to keep the meditation experience switched on.'
Meditation has different levels of benefit for different people, but having these prompts built in, and displayed to a wide audience, could help to raise awareness of relaxation tactics, and how you can regulate yourself as required.
TikTok's also partnering with child psychiatrist Dr. Willough Jenkins on a new series that'll showcase the Meditation in Sleep Hours feature in action.
Finally, TikTok's also donating $2.3 million in ad credits to 31 mental health organizations in 22 countries around the world, as an expansion of its Mental Health Education Fund.
The ad credits will help these organizations connect with in-need TikTok users, which could have expanded support and assistance benefits.
Given TikTok's reach and popularity, particularly with impressionable younger users, these are important initiatives, which should help to connect more users with assistance that they can apply for themselves, along with professional services.
And they may also help to reassure regulators as to how TikTok is looking to care for teens. Several regions are considering higher age restrictions on social media apps, in order to limit their mental health impacts.
But maybe, with more in-app measures in place, that'll help to ease concerns on this front, and enable TikTok to reach more users.
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