The real world and the digital world are two worlds that co-exist in parallel. People can have presence in both, but cannot be present in both at the same time.
As a result, most people can either be occupied with real world's "reality" that they rarely go online, or spend most of their times online and become digital zombies.
People either keep their problems to themselves and away from the internet, when others deliberately bring their harmful thought to the internet, in order to provoke others, or try to heal the pain.
In most cases, it's one way or the other.
When on the internet, those people would go to their favorite social media networks, among others.
From the West, there is Instagram, the photo- and video-sharing app owned by the tech giant Facebook. In the East, there is TikTok, the ByteDance product that is insanely popular among youths and culture.
When the two are rivals, it's easy to see when one weakness is found in one of the two, the other will quickly patch its own flaw, so it will get an advantage.
This time, TikTok is finally addressing the well-being of its users, in order to help users who are struggling with mental health issues and thoughts of suicide, ahead of Instagram.
Instagram does have a way to adjust the sensitivity of contents they see, and has tools to identify both images and words that break its rules on harmful posts.
The social media also has a dedicated help page to deal with suicide or self-injury.
But those are not proactive, despite trying to deal with mental issues that its users may experience in the first place.
This weakness was also present in TikTok.
But the Chinese company patched that flaw, by introducing a set of well-being guides, a support guide for those struggling with eating disorders and a search intervention feature that will direct users to support resources when they look up phrases such as #suicide.
TikTok’s features can also direct users to support, such as a Crisis Text Line, if they search for the term "suicide."
In a newsroom post, TikTok said that:
"We're inspired by how our community openly, honestly and creatively shares about important issues such as mental well-being or body image, and how they lift each other up and lend help during difficult times."
"We care deeply about our community, and we always look for new ways in which we can nurture their well-being. That's why we're taking additional steps to make it easier for people to find resources when they need them on TikTok."
And as part of its ongoing efforts, the company is also updating its existing warning labels for sensitive content, to also warn users if they search for something that some may find distressing, like for example "scary make-up."
Users can go past that screen by tapping on the 'Show results' to continue.
Previously, this opt-in viewing screens already appear on top of videos that some may find graphic or distressing.
Although the features are coincidentally, or perfectly timed to the National Suicide Prevention Week, the launch of the features followed reports from U.S. lawmakers that criticized Facebook for its impact on teenagers' mental health.
TikTok introduced these features, two years after seeing its first suicide case.