An Analysis of Pediatric Ophthalmology Content on TikTok

Purpose: To assess pediatric ophthalmology-related information onTikTok (ByteDance).Methods: The 12 most commonly searched terms from the American Association for Pediatric Ophthal-mology and Strabismus website were queried as TikTok hashtags. The top 20 videos for each hashtag were ana-lyzed for views, likes, comments, saves, shares, author status and gender, content, and engagement level ratio (ELR). Subanalysis of the educational videos for quality, understandability and actionability, and medi-cal accuracy using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN), Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT), and modified Medical Information and Content Index (mMICI) was performed.Results: Analysis of 222 videos revealed a cumulative 191,337,973 views. Patients/families created the most videos (60.4%), followed by optometrists (14.4%), other (laypeople/unknown) (9.0%), ophthalmologists (7.7%), non-ophthalmology physicians (4.5%), and nurses (4.1%). Content was predominantly patient experi-ence (56.8%), followed by educational (25.2%), humor (11.7%), self-promotional (3.6%), procedures (0.9%), other (0.9%), advertisements (0.5%), and career (0.5%). Educational videos had a lower ELR than humorous (3.3 vs 8.2, P < .001) and patient experience (3.3 vs 5.3, P < .001) videos, but more saves than patient experience videos (74 vs 25, P = .009). The mDISCERN scores were greater for videos authored by ophthalmologists (3, P < .001) and optometrists (2.5, P < .001) compared to lay-people (1.5).Ophthalmologist PEMAT understandability scores were greater than non-ophthalmology provid-ers'(95.5% vs 67.4%, P = .002).There was no difference in PEMAT actionability (P = .743) or mMICI scores among the author subgroups (P = .206).Conclusions: Pediatric ophthalmology content on Tik -Tok ranges in quality and understandability. Additional research is needed to help promote posts created by eyecare providers to ensure evidence-based medical content reaches pediatric patients and their families.