Visibility of Board-Certified Dermatologists on TikTok

Tik Tok is an emerging social media platform that provides a novel opportunity for health practitioners such as dermatologists to disseminate accurate health information.


Introduction
TikTok is a video-sharing social media platform with over 1.1 billion active users since its launch in 2016 [1].Social media platforms such as TikTok are used by medical and nonmedical professionals to share health information.However, health misinformation spreads more quickly than evidence-based information, posing a public health issue [2].Our study aimed to categorize popular dermatology-related posts and analyze the visibility of board-certified dermatologists (BCD) on TikTok.

Methods
The methods were designed based on a previous study that examined dermatology content on Instagram by Park et al [3].First, a list of top dermatologic diagnoses and procedures was compiled based on the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the American Society of Dermatologic Survey of Dermatologic Procedures [4,5].Then, all of the terms were queried as hashtags in TikTok's search feature on January 2, 2021.
The 20 dermatologic conditions and procedures with the highest total views were identified.Profession-specific hashtags (#dermatology, #boardcertifieddermatologist, #dermatologist, and #derm) were also queried.The term with the highest total views was chosen among synonymous terms.
The first 10 posts under each of the 44 hashtags were then viewed.Top posts were selected through TikTok's private algorithm, which uses total views, followers, and other metrics.Users' self-reported occupations were identified, and board certifications were confirmed through the Certification Matters website [6].Posts were categorized into 4 categories: educational, self-promotional, non-paid product placements, and advertisements.Educational content was identified as any post that aimed to provide informative material regarding a dermatologic condition and/or procedure.Self-promotional content was defined as posts intended to advance the user's professional pursuits.Non-dermatology-related posts were excluded.

Results
Of the 18.68 billion total views of the hashtags investigated, 12.9 billion (69.1%) were related to skin conditions, 4.26 billion (22.8%) were related to dermatologic procedures, and 1.52 billion (8.17%) were profession-specific.

Discussion
Our results suggest that most of the popular dermatology-related content on TikTok is created by individuals without verifiable medical training.This highlights a space for BCD to showcase their profession and prevent the spread of health misinformation.As the use of social media platforms like TikTok continues to grow, BCD have an opportunity to increase their presence as a credible source for the public to acquire dermatologic knowledge.
The use of hashtags explicitly related to dermatology by users who are not BCD or dermatology residents may mislead TikTok users.Transparency regarding professional health care credentials on TikTok may improve credibility.There is currently no way to verify professional credentials on TikTok; a feature to distinguish medical professionals from nonmedical professionals can add to the visibility of BCD and help users make informed decisions regarding their source of health information online.

Table 1 .
Medical professionals versus nonmedical professionals who created top dermatology-related TikTok videos (total unique creators: N=231).

Table 2 .
Users responsible for the top 10 videos under each profession-specific hashtag.