Exploring Spiritual Psychosis on TikTok

This chapter delves into the emerging concern of spiritual psychosis on TikTok, discussing how certain content can lead users down a harmful path. It provides insights on psychosis, its causes, and highlights the impact of engaging with disruptive spiritual beliefs on mental well-being, with examples from TikTokers like Ali and Dorian Bridges.

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In this week's episode, I explore the spiritual-adjacent corners of TikTok like manifestation-tok, tarot-tok, psychic-tok, and astrology-tok, and how this content can lead users down a harmful pipeline. I look at how young people, Gen Z in particular, are turning to new-age spirituality to make sense of the world and how the TikTok algorithm contributes to increasingly extreme beliefs in this area. I also share case studies of users who have devolved into "spiritual psychosis" (an unofficial term) after becoming obsessed with this side of TikTok.

Timestamps:

4:05 Why I wanted to talk about this topic

5:13 Overview of the spiritual side of TikTok

10:30 Explaining “spiritual psychosis”

13:36 Creator case studies

17:44 The role of TikTok’s algorithm

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Sources:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/astrology-is-at-the-center-of-danielle-johnson-murder-case-but-any-spiritual-practice-can-incite-violence