“I think you’d rather listen to an influencer than a doctor”: How teenage girls make meaning of influencers’ mental health advice’

Abstract

The article takes inspiration from childhood studies and child audience research to examine teenage girls’ meaning-making of popular female social media influencers’ videos in which they advise their followers on mental health issues. Using the methodology ethnography for the internet and analysing girls’ reactions to video clips, the study demonstrates that they construct influencers’ mental health content both as relatable, authentic experience stories, and as the commodification of mental health. While the girls admire and find support in the influencers, they also adopt a critical stance toward them, their commercial collaborations, and societal phenomena beyond digital platforms.

Introduction

Understanding the impact of social media on the health and well-being of children and young people is a pressing issue. Much existing research has focused on measuring the effects of social media use, identifying negative outcomes such as poorer sleep, negative body image, and eating disorders, as well as positive outcomes in terms of health information and inspiration. However, an exclusive focus on effects risks overlooking the complexity of social media and what it means in young people’s lives (boyd, 2014). Social media practices are an integral part of childhood, permeating children’s and young people’s everyday activities. These platforms serve as spaces where they express opinions and emotions, and seek validation and support (Lupton, 2021). In this sense, children and young people are not merely recipients of social media culture but active participants and co-producers of it (Coulter, 2021).

A substantial part of children’s and young people’s social media engagement involves following influencers. Statistics indicate that influencers play a significant role in the lives of children and young people, and that preferences for influencers are gendered. In Sweden, 73% of girls and 79% of boys aged 13–16 report following influencer content on social media, and the most popular profiles differ between boys and girls (Swedish Agency for the Media, 2025, 102). Influencers aim to attract and maintain followers by sharing entertaining content as well as intimate details about their personal lives. Sharing experiences of mental health problems can contribute to cultivating the authentic image that is indispensable for maintaining followers and influencer status (Lee et al., 2021; Lehto, 2022). By giving the impression that they confide in their followers without hiding anything, influencers are perceived as genuine and therefore as credible sources of information (Lee et al., 2021). This perceived authenticity also makes them attractive partners for commercial collaborations. Indeed, studies show that female influencers can increase advertising revenue by sharing details about their own mental health (Petersson McIntyre, 2020; Thelandersson, 2023). Given the role of mental health content in influencers’ posts and young people’s interest in influencers, it is important to examine how teenage girls interpret the mental health content that social media influencers share.

In previous work, we have analysed how social media influencers represent mental health problems and what kind of advice they share (Lind and Wickström, 2024a; Wickström and Lind, 2024). We have also examined teenage girls’ discussions of representations of anxiety. The result demonstrates that although the girls distinguish between “real anxiety” and what they perceive as an overuse of the term, they also emphasise that one cannot question someone's self-reported experience of anxiety (Lind and Wickström, 2024b). Building on these findings, the aim of the present study is to explore how teenage girls interpret posts about mental health. Drawing on their discussions of selected video clips, we analyse how they make meaning of influencers’ posts in which they advise their followers on mental health issues. The overarching research question is: How do teenage girls make meaning of videos in which female social media influencers give mental health advice to their followers? In this study, “advice” refers both to general suggestions for improving well-being and to influencers’ accounts of strategies they use to manage their own mental health problems. The analysis is based on interviews with teenage girls, focusing on their reactions to and discussions of ten video clips from popular female influencers’ YouTube channels.

Theoretical points of departure

Meaning-making as a relational process

Theoretically, this research project examines teenage girls as meaning-making social actors while emphasising that subjectivity is always shaped in contexts—how space, time, and materiality form the basis of children's and young people's experiences. Social media influencers are today’s celebrities, and they have an impact on both social and cultural practices (Johansson, 2017). Viewing their practice as a cultural phenomenon helps illuminate how influencers establish, negotiate, and circulate meaning in social contexts, thereby contributing to knowledge about the social processes that children and young people engage in when using and interpreting content (Buckingham, 2008). Meaning-making, in this sense, is understood as a relational process in which not only influencers and followers interact, but in which young people also discuss and negotiate meaning within their social worlds. Influencer content is further connected to broader economic, political, and cultural processes. In this way, influencers’ fame both mirrors and contributes to societal ideas and trends, giving them simultaneously conservative and a transformative function (Johansson, 2017). In the context of influencers discussing mental health, this means that societal and public health discourses are embedded in their talk, and that influencers both reproduce and reshape how people understand and talk about these issues.

In discussing the function of celebrities in people’s lives, so-called “audience research”, Johansson (2017) argues that celebrities can be understood as resources used to make sense of societal ideas, both individually and culturally, and that they play an important role in creating community and social norms. Treating influencers as a sociological phenomenon, Butler Breese (2010) examines how they prompt people to reflect on themselves and on society. She contends that celebrities functions as sacred symbols because people judge their actions, thereby negotiating moral boundaries and social norms (Butler Breese, 2010). Thus, influencers can serve as role models and impact individual subjectivities and group identities, while also working as focal points for discussions on contemporary issues beyond their specific platforms and forming part of broader societal debates.

The concept of agency has generated interest in how children actively participate in social worlds. Buckingham (2008) argues that young people’s engagement with social media enables them to develop competencies as users, competencies that are dependent on their prior experiences and accumulated knowledge. Focusing on child audiences, Buckingham (2008) shows that social media content prescribes certain understandings and subject positions, while children and young people simultaneously make meanings of that content. This means that they are neither empty vessels to be filled with information, nor automatically critical reviewers of content; i.e., they are neither “digital naives” nor “digital natives” (boyd, 2014). Similarly, Coulter (2021) emphasises the need to balance the notion that children have agency with recognition of how they resist, are influenced by, and negotiate digital media, while also acknowledging the factors that constrain their activities, such as platform design and the construction of them as potential consumers.

The present study is situated within research on influencer culture, with a specific focus on children’s and young people’s perspectives. Previous research on children’s and young people’s understanding of influencers, shows that children not only articulate what concrete meanings a particular Swedish female influencer have in their lives, but also use her as a symbol through which to discuss normative ideas about social media practices (Martínez and Olsson, 2018). Alves De Castro (2023) demonstrates that insights into influencers’ private lives foster feelings of friendship and trust among young people, while also making them susceptible to the influence of product and brand recommendations. Together, these studies show that young people’s perspectives on influencer content provide important insights into the complex relationship between influencers’ messages and young people’s negotiations of subject positions and social norms. The present study contributes to this field by examining teenage girls’ meaning-making of influencers’ posts about mental health.

Health influencers and health discourses

A large part of influencers’ interaction with their followers aims to create feelings of intimacy. Personal stories about intimate matters such as mental health problems have the potential to generate an overwhelming response, increase in followers, and ultimately benefit influencers’ commercial practices (Petersson McIntyre, 2020). Indeed, influencers who share personal experiences of mental health problems often establish themselves as mental health experts when their narratives are validated through followers’ likes and comments (Hendry et al., 2022). For example, a recent study of young adults’ views of ADHD-related content on TikTok shows that while young people critically evaluate such videos, they still rate content based on lived experience higher than content recommended by psychologists (Karasavva et al., 2025).

In previous work, we have shown that influencers’ mental health advice tends to focus on behaviour and lifestyle choices, reflecting dominant societal health discourses centred on self-care and self-improvement (Wickström and Lind, 2024). The connection between influencers’ posts and broader health discourses is reinforced through their participation in various media formats, annual advocacy events, or strategic communication for non-profit and government-funded organisations active in the mental health sector (Wickström and Lind, 2024). Such collaborations legitimise influencers’ expert and advisory roles within their own channels and mean that their content both reflects and contributes to dominant mental health discourses.

In Sweden, political debate on child welfare shifted in the late 1990s, from concerns about children as victims of problematic circumstances to concerns about children at risk of developing mental ill-health (Littmarck, 2017). Several researchers argue that the dismantling of social structures and cuts to public spending have led policymakers to focus increasingly on mental health and on encouraging individuals to change and invest in themselves (e.g. Ehrenberg 2017). Children with mental health problems, previously framed as needing social support, came to be defined as competent and responsible for their own well-being (Callegari and Levander, 2019). This shift aligns with neoliberal ideals that position individuals as free and accountable for achieving health and well-being. Drawing on her research on mental health discourses in female-dominated media spaces, Thelandersson (2023) argues that the increased visibility of mental illness is rooted in a neoliberal and postfeminist culture that urges individuals to manage their moods and attitudes. Our interest lies in how child audiences and followers understand influencer content and therefore requires attention to these wider political and cultural discourses.

Methodology

The overall research project of which this study is part, was inspired by the methodology ethnography for the internet (Hine, 2015), which encompasses the study of both online content and followers’ interpretations and uses of that content. Ethnography for the internet was developed to include face-to-face settings in which social media content is consumed, within analysis of computer-mediated communication. Its purpose is to illuminate the social and cultural processes of social media and to show how these processes become embedded in everyday life where followers interpret and co-create online content (Coulter, 2021; Hine, 2015). Using a three-step data collection procedure, we sought to understand both influencers’ mental health talk and teenage girls’ interpretations and negotiations of this talk. In this paper, we report on the final step of the project: interviews with teenage girls about how they make meaning of mental health content.

The three steps

This project was conducted in collaboration with the school health service in a medium-sized city in southern Sweden. Through teachers at three upper secondary schools, representing both theoretical and vocational programmes, we were able to present the research project to teenage girls aged 16–17 in six classes. Of the girls present, 44 chose to participate and provided written consent. In the first step, we conducted 18 interviews with groups of one to three participants. We asked the girls to name influencers who addressed mental health or (not) feeling well in their posts. These interviews took place during school hours, lasted approximately 30 minutes, and were held at the participant’s schools.

Step two involved selecting the four influencers mentioned most frequently by the girls. We watched all videos published in 2021 (n = 234) and identified all sequences in which mental health was addressed. The four influencers were all female; two were in their twenties and two in their thirties, with subscriber counts ranging from 150,000 to 1,000,000 on YouTube. We chose YouTube because it contained more in-depth discussions of mental health than the other platforms on which the influencers were active. As Hine (2015) notes, a key challenge is delimiting a manageable research object from a vast and constantly shifting online environment. Content relevant to mental health and well-being was coded and grouped into themes. The amount of mental-health-related content varied between influencers; approximately every second to fifth videos contained a developed discussion of mental health. These segments were transcribed verbatim. From this material we selected one- to two-minute video clips in which the influencers talked about managing their mental health or expressed emotions related to mental health.

In the third and final step, we conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with 38 of the 44 girls who participated in the first round of interviews. We used video elicitation techniques (e.g. Zehe and Belz, 2016). Three interviews were conducted individually, while the remainder were conducted with pairs or groups of three students.

The interviews

The interviews took place in secluded rooms within the girls’ schools. The participants could choose whether they wanted to be interviewed individually or together with one or two friends, forming the groups themselves. Most chose to be interviewed in a group, which allowed them to hear and discuss their classmates’ views (cf. Freeman and Mathison, 2009). We began each interview by asking the girls to describe their familiarity with, and overall impressions of, the four influencers. We then showed ten video clips, divided into four question areas: (1) anxiety versus worry, (2) influencers’ responsibility toward their followers, (3) stories about mental health problems, and (4) mental health advice given to followers. After each set of video clips, we asked for the girls’ spontaneous reactions to capture their immediate impressions and to give them the opportunity to steer the conversation. We then developed follow-up questions based on their comments and asked our pre-determined questions. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

In this study, we analysed two of the four question areas: stories about mental health problems and mental health advice to the followers. The first set of clips contained the influencers’ personal accounts of feeling unwell, living with mental illness, and receiving help and improving. The second set presented mental health advice to followers, including the value of routines, the importance of seeking help, and strategies for coping with difficult times.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was granted by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (No. 2021-00329). During the introductory meetings with the school classes, we emphasised that participation was voluntary and that students could withdraw at any time until the results were published. We also stressed that the interview questions focused on their reactions to the video content and that they were not expected to share personal experiences. Girls who wished to participate received written information and signed a consent form. They were also informed that they could contact the school health service for support, an arrangement we had made in advance should any participant wish to talk to someone after the interview.

Consent was treated not as a one-time event prior to fieldwork but as an ongoing process throughout the research. During the interviews, we remained attentive to any signs of discomfort. Before showing the videos in each of the four question areas, we described the content and asked whether the girls felt comfortable watching them.

The analysis process

The analysis of the teenage girls’ reactions to, and discussions of, the video clips was inspired by reflexive thematic analysis and the idea that themes reflect patterns of shared meaning (Braun and Clarke, 2019). Rather than merely summarising participants’ understandings of a phenomenon, reflexive thematic analysis aims both to report participants’ overt statements, what Braun and Clarke (2019) describe as the “surface” level of meaning, and to explore the nuanced manifestations of these statements, including implicit or unexpected meanings. Our interpretative framework is a critical constructionist interrogation of meaning. This approach involves examining the factors that contextualise teenage girls’ meaning-making of influencers’ mental health advice by interrogating dominant patterns of meaning as well as contested views on influencers’ strategies (cf. Braun and Clarke, 2019).

Inspired by critical childhood studies and its attention to how young people participate in their social worlds (e.g. Balagopalan et al., 2023), we also examined how participants negotiated the assumptions and discourses that frame ideas of health and influencer content. Following Freeman and Mathison (2009), we view interviews as social events in which participants express their interpretations in interaction with one another and with the researchers. For example, one girl corrected herself after saying “you look up to them”, adding “or some people look up to them” (18) ¹ . This may reflect an awareness that “looking up to influencers” is not fully socially accepted, and that in the interview setting she wished to distance herself from the statement in front of peers or the interviewer. This example illustrates how we understand participants’ answers as constructed through group interaction: participants add to, confirm, or contradict one another, resulting in jointly produced and balanced responses.

We began the analysis by reading the transcripts and summarising the main views and arguments in each interview. We then combined all the interviews and summarised how the participants discussed influencers’ talk about mental health—how they related to the content, what effects they attributed to mental health talk, how they understood their relationship to the influencers in this context, and what forms of criticism they expressed. We found that most interviews were dominated by positive attitudes toward the influencers and their messages, while others were strongly critical. However, attitudes varied considerably depending on the specific video clip being discussed. In the next stage, we examined how the girls constructed the actual mental health messages shared by the influencers and developed two themes: (1) mental health messages as relatable, authentic experience stories, and (2) mental health messages as commodification.

Results

Constructing the content as relatable, authentic experience stories

The analysis of the interviews demonstrate that the girls construct influencers’ mental health content as relatable stories grounded in authentic experiences. They emphasise feelings of respect, belonging, and recognition, and consider influencers’ stories important because they normalise and destigmatise mental illness.

Respect, belonging, and recognition

Many influencers present enviable lifestyles in their content. Learning that an influencer has struggled with mental health can challenge the assumption that they live an effortless life and can lead to increased respect from followers. As Sara explained: “In a way, when you hear that they’ve been through hard things, you kind of respect them” (14). The fragility and intimacy expressed by an influencer thus contribute to the girls’ sense of belonging. Sofia described this dynamic: “It is like talking to a friend. It takes away some pressure. Social media is like friends” (1). Often, this sense of friendship takes the form of a long-term parasocial relationship, allowing the girls to feel that they know the influencers well. As Sabina put it: “I know that she does not feel well—she has talked about that over all these years” (7). Even if the girls cannot relate to all parts of their vlogs, they still construct the influencers’ stories about mental health as relatable. Maria explained: “I cannot relate to their lifestyle, but she feels just like me on a normal day—and I start sympathise” (5). Recognising their own emotions in the influencer’s story is described as crucial for creating a sense of belonging, even when other content feels distant or alien.

When asked for the spontaneous reaction to the three clips featuring stories about mental health problems, Sofia responded: “God how I relate! I can relate because I remember how it was. Just the feeling, that Loreley S said, that you blame yourself because everything in my life is good” (1). Her reaction illustrates how recognition becomes central to the girls’ meaning-making of influencer's stories about mental illness. Maria similarly described turning to YouTube for comfort: “I turn to YouTube to get comfort. I am not alone. It can help to get better. She cries, so I might as well cry” (5). Influencers’ stories are thus constructed as both relatable and comforting.

The degree of perceived relatability, how strongly one identifies with the content, shape how the girls respond to influencers’ representations of mental health. Jasmine explained that if you don't know the influencer already, it's difficult to relate to the content: “It's not something I usually watch and then I distance myself from it. It would have been different if it was someone you knew, but now it's just kind of hard to watch” (11). On the one hand, the experience of having a relationship with an influencer is central to relating to the content. On the other hand, influencers' posts can prompt reflection on mental health even among those who do not personally identify with the experiences described. Maria explained that she recognises the problems influencers discuss in people around her, which helps her understand what it is like to live with mental illness and appreciate how difficult it can be for those affected (5). Thus, the content can be meaningful not only through self-recognition but also as a way of learning about mental illness.

Meaningful message

The influencers who share content about their mental health are described by the girls as unusual. As Evy explained: “They differ from other influencers by not just posting the best. This is meaningful for the followers’ emotion—not feeling well when everyone else is feeling well” (8). According to the girls, sharing mental health stories introduces an alternative to the social media landscape, which is typically dominated by success stories and images of happiness.

Interviewer: What do you think has been the main purpose of putting out these videos?

Isa: To open a dialogue, to tell what it's like. One of them was titled Suicide Prevention Day, so that's also an important story—that this person who is so influential and has so much in life is still sad. [...] I think it's opening a dialogue and showing that maybe not everything is a bed of roses all the time (2).

The girls view stories about mental illness as addressing a pressing societal issue. They suggest that such stories challenge the subject positions typically prescribed for people. As Maria put it: “They change the picture—they are also humans who can feel like shit sometimes” (5). Julia expressed a similar view: “Tove is a great influencer. She shows that it's okay to feel bad” (4). When celebrities such as influencers reveal a human side and speak openly about not feeling well, their stories are perceived as meaningful for followers’ subjective meaning-making. The girls also describe these influencers as a positive force in public debate, helping to normalise and de-stigmatise mental illness.

Self-reported experiences

While the girls find influencers’ stories about mental health problems meaningful, they consider their explicit advice to be generalised and simplistic. Because everyone experiences mental health problems differently, such advice is perceived as difficult to apply. In contrast, the girls describe doctors or psychologists as able to provide individually tailored recommendations. The girls also emphasise the value of medical education (6; 10; 14). The following interview excerpt illustrates how they compare advice from different sources:

Interviewer: For someone who is feeling bad and needs advice—what do you think about advice that influencers give versus advice you can get elsewhere, from the health centre or a school counsellor for example?

Nour: They speak from their own perspective. Professional help can give you more of an individual perspective—what's best for you. Now you only hear what has helped them and it may not work for you at all because, as Nadia said before, you feel bad on different levels and in different ways, so routines may not help anyone else.

Emma: On the other hand, I think a lot of people can respect them and really want to do what they did.

Nour: I think you'd rather listen to an influencer than a doctor, even if they don't say the right thing.

Interviewer: And why do you think that?

Nour: Because you look up to these people, or some people look up to these people, and you don't look up to the doctor at the health centre. You don't look up to the old man who comes in and says—now you're going to get a routine—and sends you home.

Emma: No, because then you also see—well, it helped that person, it may work for me too, it's worth trying, but it doesn't always help.

Nadia: But then you kind of get proof that it has helped someone and then it feels like it might help me (18).

Influencers’ advice is presented as important but general when compared with the individualised guidance offered by medical professionals. Although the girls attribute greater scientific knowledge and authority to the medical profession, they nonetheless describe influencers’ experience-based stories as more credible. Personal accounts of what has worked, as influencers’ advice is perceived, function as a form of trust capital that strengthens the relationship between influencers and followers. Celebrity and admiration for the influencer outweigh the professional’s knowledge. The girls emphasise that it does not matter if the influencer’s advice is not entirely correct; what matters is that the story is grounded in the influencer’s own perceived experience. Authenticity and trust therefore underpin the influencer’s role as a health adviser (cf. Hendry et al., 2022).

In describing encounters with doctors at health centres, the girls highlight a lack of admiration (“you don’t look up to”) and a sense of being left alone (“sends you home”). For influencers' stories about mental health to be meaningful, the girls consider admiration and a sense of not being alone to be essential, qualities they perceive as missing in medical encounters. Unlike a doctor, an influencer feels ‘close’ because the relationship is mediated through the phone and is always accessible. One can turn to the influencers’ videos whenever needed. This ongoing, readily available relationship creates a feeling of personal connection.

In conclusion, health influencers are constructed as unusual figures whose messages are meaningful individually and socially. Their celebrity status and personal experience stories foster admiration and trust in their mental health content. While the medical profession is recognised for its specialist knowledge, influencers are perceived as more approachable and as offering a continuous relationship, filling a need that medical practice is seen as failing to meet.

Constructing the content as mental health commodification

Collaborations and advertising are central features of influencer culture, and the girls we interviewed are aware of this. However, the analysis shows that there is a limit to what they consider acceptable. The girls construct some of the influencers’ stories as examples of mental health commodification. They object when influencers appear to prioritise economic profit or exceed what they perceive as acceptable boundaries for product placement in talk about mental health, and they reflect on the negative consequences of such behaviour.

Exceeding acceptability

The girls believe that influencers’ trust capital is weakened when financial gain appears to take precedence over supporting followers or contributing positively to societal mental health discourse. A large majority reacted very negatively to a video in which an influencer offered advice on “getting through the fall” while simultaneously promoting her new workout clothing brand as part of the advice. They described the video as “tacky” and “unprofessional” (11), “silly” and “embarrassing” (16), and argued that the collaboration clearly came first, while the mental health message added afterwards. As Emma put it: “Then she basically sits there and says ‘spend your money on me and you’ll feel better'” (18). Some participants only began to reflect critically after hearing their friends’ reactions. As Lovisa noted: “I didn’t react to it at first but now that you say it” (11). These different positions and discussions illustrate how the girls negotiate ethical and moral boundaries around influencer marketing (cf. Butler Breese, 2010). The low level of trust expressed in this context was built collectively through group interaction. The influencer was criticised for packaging mental health advice according to the social media logic of the attention economy: “Maybe you shouldn’t use mental illness as a PR trick”, exclaimed Edit (13). A usually popular influencer was thus perceived as crossing a line when mental health advice was combined with advertising.

Another example of criticism concerned influencers who collaborate with commercial actors in the health sector. In the following discussion, the girls raised concerns about advertising for neuropsychiatric assessments:

Interviewer: Is it possible to profit from this type of video and collaborations?

Ellen: Yes, you can. They may have some collaboration with a psychologist. I know that many do ADHD tests in collaboration.

Interviewer: Ok.

(the girls mention two influencers)

Interviewer: Who do they collaborate with then?

Ellen: Private clinics, or psychologists—I don't know what to call it. So, they collaborate with them and do a lot of advertising that you should go and do tests there, because it goes fast, and you get a diagnosis fast and...

Amanda: There are a lot of reactions to doing things like that. Some think it's good and some think it's bad—that anyone can 'well, I'm having a bit of trouble sitting still, so I'll go and have an ADHD test', that sort of thing (19).

Although the discussion ended with the comment that “some think it's good and some think it's bad”, the girls' overall attitude toward collaborations with commercial actors in the health sector appeared predominantly negative in the interview situation.

Despite the strong criticism of advertising in the context of mental health talk, the girls also acknowledged that influencers' work depends on advertising and collaborations. As Amanda explained: “It's their job to do that” (19). The participants were able to weigh the pros and cons together.

Ella: It feels a bit ugly to capitalise on other people's mental health problems. Then I understand that she wants to tip about a site, but when you know that she makes money on that. So yes, it was...

Astrid: Oh, you thought so.

Ella: Mm

Astrid: But it's a good advice to get out and get moving.

Ella: Yes, of course (17).

Here, the girls express criticism of advertising linked to health advice and an understanding of the conditions under which influencers work. They evaluate the content with this context in mind. In this example, the girls show a degree of tolerance when the mixing of advertising and mental health content serves a purpose they perceive as positive. A ‘good’ purpose can, to some extent, excuse an influencer's commercial commitments.

The girls also demonstrated an ability to reflect on the strategic ways influencers integrate product promotion into health-related messages. Maria observed:

Aha, what a clever way to introduce this tip of promoting her product. On the one hand, she earns from it, but it is attractive. So, I myself think her workout clothes look great—that you can find different colours and shapes, and everyone can find theirs as well. But it's kind of a smart way to minimally try to get this subconsciously—i.e., to have her clothes. It's like a trap—clothes and then 'oh maybe I should exercise'. Because clothes often entice you to do things (5).

Thus, strong condemnation of influencer marketing coexists with nuanced reflections on how influencers package their health advice. The girls demonstrate competencies on multiple levels regarding influencer culture and the attention economy. They also emphasise that these influencers are vulnerable and face criticism and hate (Lind and Wickström, 2024a). In this way, the girls show awareness of and take a critical, yet pragmatic, approach to the fact that influencers work under specific conditions.

Contradictory stories’ negative consequences for followers

According to the girls, one consequence of collaborations and influencers’ need for followers and constant reassurance is that it dilutes the concept of anxiety and risks misleading young people. Hanna suggested that young people may attribute depression to themselves based on very limited experiences, such as “crying yesterday” (6). The girls also argued that the contradictory nature of some videos can confuse followers, for example, when influencers say they feel bad while simultaneously presenting a life of abundance. As Miriam objected: “It does not look like she is feeling bad” (3).

Furthermore, the girls expressed concern that such videos may have a depressing effect on followers. Because the disclosed experiences are unidirectional, they may prompt recipients to reflect in ways that are not always helpful. Some girls believed that these stories could even trigger imitation, particularly when mental health problems are framed as cool and as part of a desirable identity. Julia explained:

When you find out that the person you look up to, who is so cool and has a lot of status, that they cut themselves, then you think 'god how cool, maybe I’ll do it too because I feel bad too' (4).

Julia argued that when followers admire influencers and want to emulate them, there is a risk that they may also imitate harmful behaviours. At the same time, she described a strategy to counteract misleading information, for example, scrolling past videos to prevent them from being promoted to others.

In conclusion, the relatability of influencers’ personal experience stories loses meaning and becomes associated with negative consequences when the stories appear contradictory, overly strategic, or unprofessional. These are violations the girls criticised. Interestingly, they mostly referred to how others might be affected rather than themselves. This may reflect their sense of being in control of their own relationships with influencers, but it may also indicate a need, within the interview setting, to demonstrate critical thinking, resistance to negative messages, and even a sense of responsibility for protecting others.

Another consequence of the increased visibility of mental health talk, according to the girls, is that it can feel compelling to pay attention to one’s mental health. They described an expectation that they should talk about their mental health (15; 18). As Frida put it: “Mental health problems are something that girls are supposed to have, sort of” (15). This means, they argued, that you can feel strange if you do not have anxiety. They also noted expectations around how you should respond to others, for example, that you are expected to listen, acknowledge, and offer help to someone feeling unwell. Isa described in this way: “You're supposed to acknowledge that the person is right to feel this way. You should say like this: “I hear you, I feel for you, what do you want us to do?” (2).

This reflects a kind of therapy culture in which people are expected to share their mental health problems and be available to listen to others. However, this culture is not limited to social media; it is part of broader societal discourse, including messaging from authorities and non-governmental organisations. For example, the Public Health Agency of Sweden (2025) provides guidance on its website under “Your mental health”, with a page titled “Asking and listening so that someone wants to tell you”, which teaches how to ask open questions, affirm, mirror, listen actively, and show respect, understanding, and care. The tone resembles training for psychologists or therapists, echoing Isa's comment about how one is “supposed to acknowledge”.

The construction of influencer content as mental health commodification thus concerns episodes in which the limits of acceptable cooperation or marketing strategies are exceeded. The girls believe there are boundaries around how influencers can incorporate mental health stories into their channels, and they argue that talking about mental health may entail negative consequences for followers. The increased societal attention to mental health is also described as contributing to a sense of pressure to talk about mental health problems, and to listen and respond appropriately when others do so.

Discussion

This study contributes to research on influencer culture by examining teenage girls’ interpretations of social media influencers’ mental health posts and by highlighting the complexity of young people’s meaning-making around pressing societal issues. We consider the research interviews not only as arenas where ideas and opinions are shared, but also as sites of self-presentation and identity management. Therefore, we assume that the thoughts expressed by the girls during the interviews were shaped, at least in part, by their interpretation of what is possible, or even necessary, to say about mental health-related content produced by social media influencers to be perceived favourably by us as researchers and by their peers (for detailed examples, see Lind and Wickström, 2024b). The positions we report must thus be understood as co-constructed during the interviews (cf. Freeman and Mathison, 2009).

The analysis shows that the girls participate in an ongoing process of social negotiation (Buckingham 2008) by actively choosing their relationships with the influencers while also criticising them. They perceive influencers as important actors in the destigmatisation of mental health problems. At the same time, they are highly critical of mental health becoming a tool within influencers’ economic logic. These opposing ways of making meaning of influencers’ messages reveal some areas of tension.

The first area of tension concerns whether influencers’ mental health content is perceived as authentic or confusing. The girls emphasise that such content contributes to the feeling of a relationship with someone you can trust and relate to. Authenticity, trustworthiness, and relatability are therefore fundamental to how followers assess influencers. Although mental health content contributes to greater trust among followers as it is perceived as disclosure of vulnerability (Lee et al., 2021), our study demonstrates that followers’ tolerance has limits.

While influencers’ experience-based stories can build trust in their mental health advice, this trust is undermined when the content appears contradictory, overly strategic, or unprofessional—when the influencer's personal gain is perceived as taking precedence over the relationship with the audience. In contrast to the construction of mental health stories as relatable and as counterbalancing stories about success and happiness, the construction of such stories as mental health commodification demonstrates followers’ criticism and distrust. Even when influencers’ intentions are perceived as good, for example, promoting products intended to help someone who feel better, product placement embedded within mental health talk is constructed as confusing and as damaging to feelings of interconnectedness. The dual role of the influencer, as a friend giving mental health advice (Wickström and Lind, 2024), and as an entrepreneur providing services for her sponsors (Petersson McIntyre, 2020), clearly has its limitations. Influencers' credibility is threatened when mental health advice becomes conflated with marketing; crossing the boundaries of what followers find acceptable calls their authenticity into question.

The second tension concerns experiential versus professional knowledge. Health influencers are attributed respect and admiration because they speak from personal experiences (cf. Karasavva, 2025). An influencer can also function as a long-standing, ongoing point of contact, easy to access, even if the interaction is largely unidirectional (cf. Marwick and boyd, 2011). In contrast, health professionals and their medical expertise are attributed a high degree of trust and are considered credible in making relevant individual assessments. However, in practice, they are described as more difficult to access and as offering insufficient care for mental health problems, with patient contact being brief (cf. Ohlsson, 2018). Understanding the girls’ meaning-making as commentary on society and current issues beyond digital platforms (Butler Breese, 2010) helps illuminate what this tension implies. The polarisation between influencers’ practices and institutional healthcare raises the question of whether the scope of care is inadequate for addressing teenage girls’ needs. Do health influencers fill a gap in that they provide conversation and social support that was previously offered within healthcare before the 1980s (cf. Lindblom, 2023)?

The final tension concerns the girls’ simultaneous arguments for reducing stigma around mental health problems and their critique of what they describe as a coercive expectation to constantly talk about mental health. On the one hand, mental health talk is constructed as normalising and destigmatising mental health problems, an argument that has a prominent place in public discourse (Ohlsson, 2018). An underlying assumption in the girls’ reasoning is that mental health problems are associated with negative stereotypes and are not considered normal. This aligns with the discourse that “we must dare to talk about mental illness”. In this regard, influencers are constructed by the girls as truth-tellers, granted authenticity for speaking about what is perceived as repressed or hidden. Yet, as Michel Foucault (2002) argues, the “hypothesis of oppression”, the idea that certain topics are silenced, can itself stimulate and produce speech. The effect is the initiation of practices aimed at discovering and generating knowledge about the phenomenon (Foucault, 2002). Influencers’ disclosures can thus be understood as part of a broader discursive production of mental health talk.

On the other hand, the girls also represent mental health talk as coercive. Research on constructions of mental health in Swedish political debate in the 2000s shows that a focus on the risk of developing poor mental health replaced earlier concerns about vulnerability rooted in problematic circumstances (Callegari and Levander, 2019). The shift had consequences, particularly for girls, who came to be represented both as carriers of ill health and as responsible for managing their independence and well-being (Callegari and Levander, 2019). Against this backdrop, the tension between speaking up to normalise mental illness and feeling compelled to speak becomes comprehensible. The girls construct influencers’ posts as important for acknowledging and speaking about mental illness, while simultaneously questioning the subject position of the “confessing girl” that health influencers help enact.

While more research is needed to understand how teenagers interpret and make use of mental health messages in social media, existing research and our findings underline the importance of examining the entanglement between influencers’ posts and societal discourses on mental health, as well as the subjectivities prescribed to teenagers and their negotiations of these.