From Awareness to Self-Diagnosis: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Mental Health Identity among Young People

Abstract

Social media has become an important space for young people to seek information, validation, and language for understanding their mental health experiences. TikTok and other short-form video platforms have made terms such as anxiety, ADHD, trauma, burnout, depression, and bipolar increasingly present in everyday conversations. This article aims to analyze the role of social media in shaping young people’s mental health identity through the phenomenon of self-diagnosis, while also developing the conceptual awareness-to-self-diagnosis pathway framework. The method used was a narrative literature review with a conceptual approach. The reviewed literature included national and international journal articles, academic books, and reports from health organizations relevant to social media, digital mental health literacy, self-diagnosis, algorithms, and youth identity. The findings show that social media can increase mental health literacy, provide emotional validation, and open conversations about psychological help. However, brief, personal, emotional, and repeated content may also encourage young people to interpret everyday psychological experiences as clinical symptoms. Platform algorithms reinforce this process through exposure to similar content, while digital communities provide social validation that makes psychological labels feel increasingly convincing. This article concludes that self-diagnosis on social media cannot be understood merely as misinformation, but also as a process of meaning-making and identity formation. The implication is that digital mental health literacy needs to help young people distinguish self-reflection, initial screening, personal experience, and professional diagnosis.