What kind of autism content is on TikTok?
I came across this graphic and post from LinkedIn user Brandon Herscovitch. It’s an interesting deep dive into the autism content on TikTok relative to autism diagnosis level. I didn’t know how to best share it, so it’s cut / pasted below.
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Views of autism content on #Tiktok associated with different levels / support needs hashtags
With over 27 billion views on the #autism hashtag alone, Tiktok has been an effective resource for disseminating autism related content by various types of content creators, and for various types of audiences.
Given the heterogeneous nature of autism I started looking at views associated with different autism experiences and support needs. These data present some initial findings.
This was a fairly informal analysis. I looked at hashtags commonly associated with the categories until I seemed to identify a representative sample.
Level 1, or low support needs hashtags included:
#actuallyautistic 6.6B
#actuallyautistictiktoks 97.2M
#actuallyautisticppl 25.1M
#level1autistic 717.5K
#highfunctioningautism 19.7M
#lowsupportneedsautism 93.7k
#actuallyautisticadult 8.5M
Total about 6.8B
Level 2, or moderate support needs hashtags included:
#moderateautism 6.5M
#level2autistic 2M
Total about 8.5M
There were simply fewer hashtags associated with this category that I identified.
Level 3, or high support needs hashtags included:
#profoundautism 41.7M
#profoundlyautistic 23.5K
#severeautism 45.9M
#severeautismawareness 2M
#severelyautistic 117.7K
#level3 autistic 2M
#lowfunctioningautism 252.2K
#highsupportneedsautistic 8M
Total about 100M
(Data confirmed as of 8/24/2023)
If you feel I’ve missed any key hashtags, or that I’ve categorized in a misleading or problematic manner, please let me know!
Across all categories, that’s a total of 6,908,500,000 (6.9B) views.
L1 0.984%
L2 0.001%
L3 0.015%
Views and representation for all experiences and support needs is important, and it's great to see such reach for Category 1 / L1. There’s not a finite number of views to go around so we don’t need to look at this as a zero sum game. I hope to see continued support for dissemination of Category 1 / L1 content, while seeing a more representative level of dissemination in the other categories.
I'd love suggestions on what sort of data you'd find valuable if I dig deeper. I'd value feedback from people invested and interested in the different communities represented here or other topics related to autism or behavior analysis.
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I think it’s a fascinating take. What really stood out is the massive number of #actuallyautistic tags. 6.6 billion, representing the bulk of all autistic traffic. Many of the self-diagnosed use this hashtag. I did, for a while. But I found too many bullies and simply mean people in that movement, so I stopped. I haven’t found too many Level 2 autistics, like me, using that tag on social media.
What do you think?