Increasing Youth Engagement Through TikTok

Background:

The Taking Time for Teens (T3) Project is a Tier 1 replication project in Southwest GA being administrated by Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and Phoebe Putney-Network of Trust (PNOT) and contracted partners throughout the service area. The project has a target population of youth aged 14-19. These youth will participate in select evidence-based programs, youth leadership council (YLC) activities, and other community engagement events that may arise. As this population can be challenging to reach, engage, and keep involved in the project; it was incumbent upon the T3 Team to come up with creative and innovative means to keep the youth actively engaged with the T3 Project. The use of social media, specifically the TikTok platform was chosen as the method to garner more youth interest.

Program background:

In order to meet the youth where they were, it was imperative for the T3 Team to increase social media interaction among the area’s youth within the target population. Working with youth from various YLC Groups in the service area, TikTok videos were created that centered around topics the youth felt were relevant to risk reduction and optimal adolescent health. Each YLC Team worked collaboratively to choose a topic and develop a short skit, which was filmed and posted on the T3 TikTok page. The youth also tagged their peers, and the links were shared within their communities. This project was initially completed in August 2022 and then repeated in April 2023 with 11 YLC Teams who created new TikTok videos that were posted to the T3 TikTok page.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

In July 2022, before implementation of the first round of the project, the reach for three T3 social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) was 234 followers and 10 interactions (likes/shares). The following month, August 2022, after the seven TikTok videos were posted there was a significant increase in T3 social media presence; the number of followers increased to 316 and interactions increased to 5,035. To ensure that the social media activity remains consistent, new information is shared and updated frequently, and the data is monitored on a monthly basis. Social Media Analytics for the second round of this project, completed in April 2023, is currently being evaluated, but preliminary data shows a similar trend to the first round of this project.

Conclusions:

This proved to be an effective tool as there was a significant increase in the T3 social media activity once the videos were posted.

Implications for research and/or practice:

The use of social media for youth to develop their own health messaging may be a useful tool to engage youth and maintain their engagement. It may also serve to engage other youth in their community.