ABOUT COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS: Community Connections is a lesson collection designed for adult learners and community colleges, with the goal of inspiring student civic action. This might be respectful debate or conversation about a local issue, planning a community event, or a creative project that helps connect local, national and global issues.
To use this lesson: First, watch the video and answer the questions below as a warm up. Next, choose one or more of the activities under "Take Action" that best fits your classroom. Or, use the segment above to inspire your own original classroom activities — the spirit of these lessons is to connect current events to actions that make your community a better place for everyone!
SUMMARY
In recent years, people have become more comfortable sharing their personal experiences about mental health, a sign that stigma around it is diminishing. On Instagram and TikTok combined, there are nearly 90 million posts with the hashtag “mental health.” But not all the information online is accurate. Stephanie Sy speaks with licensed psychologist Taisha Caldwell-Harvey to learn more.
View the transcript of the story.
WARM-UP QUESTIONS
- Who is Taisha Caldwell-Harvey, and what is her background?
- Why is it harmful to label everyday emotional experiences as clinical disorders, according to Caldwell-Harvey?
- What is driving the rise of mental health misinformation and self-diagnosis on social media?
- How can we address this problem and promote more responsible conversations around mental health online, according to Caldwell-Harvey?
- When might social media posts about mental health be helpful, and when might they be misleading?
FOCUS QUESTIONS
- In your opinion, what makes a social media post seem trustworthy, and how is that different from it actually being trustworthy?
- What responsibilities do influencers and content creators have when posting about serious topics like mental health?
Media literacy: What role does the lack of clear authority or credentials on social media play in the spread of mental health misinformation? How can we critically evaluate the credibility of creators who share mental health advice?
TAKE ACTION
If you could design an app to help news consumers identify misinformation, how would you do it? What features would it include? Use this activity to plan out your app.
You might also want to use this activity work as a classroom to find reliable news sources. Which use AI to enhance their product? Do you think it adds or detracts from the news to use AI images and content?
Find three social media posts related to mental health. These can be from platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
For each post, carefully note the information or claims being presented and identify who posted it.
Next, use credible sources such as the World Health Organization website and the National Institute of Mental Health website to fact-check the information shared in each post. Compare the claims in the social media posts with information from these trusted sources to determine whether the posts are accurate, misleading, or false.
Write a one-page reflection addressing the following:
- For each social media post you examined, describe what you found when comparing its information to credible sources
- Describe any challenges you faced in fact-checking or organizing your findings
- Explain what strategies you will use in the future to carefully evaluate information you find on social media
This project was funded under the 2024 Leonore Annenberg Civic Mission of the Nation Initiative, sponsored by the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics. LAIC is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
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