Diverse Faces, Trust Issues on TikTok Dermatology

TikTok has become a go-to spot for many Americans looking for quick laughs or news, and doctors are hopping on the trend to share health tips. Dermatology videos are especially popular because skin problems affect everyone. Yet, the field itself is still not very diverse.

A recent study examined the top 55 dermatologist TikTok creators to see who is following them and how reliable their videos are. The researchers checked each doctor’s background—race, gender, sexual orientation—and scored the videos with a tool called DISCERN that measures how trustworthy medical content is.

The results were mixed. Doctors who are Latinx or African American scored a bit higher on the reliability scale, but overall many videos still fell short of what experts consider dependable. This suggests that even when minority doctors share information, the content may not always meet quality standards.

Another striking finding was how few minority dermatologists appear in these top spots. There are very few Latinx, African American, or LGBTQIA+ doctors on the platform’s leaderboards. This lack of representation means that people from these groups might not see doctors who look like them, which can affect how comfortable they feel about the advice they receive.

When medical voices on social media are not diverse, it can widen existing gaps in healthcare. If certain communities never see themselves reflected in the content they trust, their health outcomes could suffer.

The study points out that fixing these gaps is essential for building a more inclusive online medical community. In short, TikTok offers great potential to spread skin health knowledge, but the current mix of voices and the questionable trustworthiness of many videos highlight a need for better representation and higher content standards. By improving both, the platform could help close health disparities that already exist in dermatology.