Document Type
Article
Abstract
Social media increasingly serves as important spaces for mental health information seeking and peer support, especially for individuals facing barriers to traditional care. Although nonsuicidal self-injury is frequently discussed on social media, there is limited understanding of the factors that influence the visibility of this discourse. We analyzed 973 videos related to nonsuicidal self-injury on TikTok to examine the prevalence and characteristics of posts that become unavailable (i.e., ephemeral) over time, whether due to user deletion or platform removal. Videos that used addiction-related language, included trigger warnings, or depicted scars were significantly associated with ephemerality. These findings highlight how anticipated stigma (user deletion) and enacted stigma (platform moderation) contribute to the disappearance of nonsuicidal self-injury discourse. By identifying which expressions are most vulnerable to ephemerality, this study extends stigma theory to algorithmic contexts and underscores the consequences for recovery-oriented and harm reduction–focused support online.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 2026.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2026 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
APA Citation
Vera, V., & Mohammadi, E. (2026). Ephemerality as Stigma in Algorithmic Contexts: Moderation and User-Driven Deletion of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Content on TikTok. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-026-01654-y