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Purpose <p>While social media aims to exclude child maltreatment content, prior research has found that TikTok videos of parents engaging in psychological maltreatment behaviors (PMB) are prevalent and hugely popular, creating a community which normalizes and promotes this form of maltreatment of children. This study addressed research questions about parental engagement of PMB on TikTok:&#xa0;(1) What subtypes of PMB are present? (2) What were the apparent in-the-moment motivations of the parents? (3) Were parents actively seeking to boost user engagement with these videos? and (4) What risks were children exposed to and what were parents’ responses?</p> Methods <p>The sample consisted of 180 PMB videos posted in English (US) by 34 TikTok creators which were coded for content.</p> Results <p>Four of the six types of PMB described in the definition endorsed by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC, Guidelines for the psychosocial evaluation of suspected psychological maltreatment of children and youth&#xa0;(APSAC, <CitationRef CitationID="CR1">2017</CitationRef>; Hart et al., <CitationRef CitationID="CR17">2017</CitationRef>) were observed, alone or in combination. Two thirds of the videos involved parents responding to children’s misbehavior while one third involved parents intentionally provoking their children. Almost all creators used strategies to boost user engagement. In about half of the videos, the children were noticeably distraught and yet few parents offered to comfort their child. In many videos other children were also recipients of PMB by their parents.</p> Conclusions <p>Policy, programming, and social media content moderation suggestions are offered for better protection of children from this harmful, insidious practice of parents engaging in PMB on social media.</p>

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What Psychological Maltreatment Behaviors Toward Children are Posted on TikTok by Caregivers and Why?"

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年5月13日

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  • Amy J. L. Baker,
  • Marla R. Brassard,
  • Tara Balin,
  • Duran Boyd,
  • Naomi Chandler-Ofuya,
  • Julia Kagan

摘要

Purpose

While social media aims to exclude child maltreatment content, prior research has found that TikTok videos of parents engaging in psychological maltreatment behaviors (PMB) are prevalent and hugely popular, creating a community which normalizes and promotes this form of maltreatment of children. This study addressed research questions about parental engagement of PMB on TikTok: (1) What subtypes of PMB are present? (2) What were the apparent in-the-moment motivations of the parents? (3) Were parents actively seeking to boost user engagement with these videos? and (4) What risks were children exposed to and what were parents’ responses?

Methods

The sample consisted of 180 PMB videos posted in English (US) by 34 TikTok creators which were coded for content.

Results

Four of the six types of PMB described in the definition endorsed by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC, Guidelines for the psychosocial evaluation of suspected psychological maltreatment of children and youth (APSAC, 2017; Hart et al., 2017) were observed, alone or in combination. Two thirds of the videos involved parents responding to children’s misbehavior while one third involved parents intentionally provoking their children. Almost all creators used strategies to boost user engagement. In about half of the videos, the children were noticeably distraught and yet few parents offered to comfort their child. In many videos other children were also recipients of PMB by their parents.

Conclusions

Policy, programming, and social media content moderation suggestions are offered for better protection of children from this harmful, insidious practice of parents engaging in PMB on social media.