How does social media function as an informal institution of adult mental health education? Explore the benefits, limitations, and critical skills needed to navigate mental health content online.
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to…
Understand how social media serves as an informal institution of adult education, addressing topics of accessibility, stigma, and convenience.
Identify five benefits of social media as an informal learning environment and four limitations associated with relying on it for mental health information.
Analyze the credibility of digital mental health content using the 7-factor evaluation framework to differentiate between evidence-based content and various types of falsified digital content.
Differentiate how five adult education theories, informal and incidental learning, self-directed learning, transformative learning, connectivism, and constructivism, explain distinct ways adults learn about mental health on social media.
How platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have become spaces where adults access and construct mental health knowledge.
Have you ever used social media to conduct research? Whether it's for finding the best local café in town, looking for reviews on a new skincare product, or finding the perfect workout routine, social media can function as an informal, educational search engine!
Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok have become major hubs for accessing information on a wide range of topics and current events. Among the extensive content uploaded on social media, mental health content has become particularly prominent, as discussions and awareness around this topic continue to rise.
Take a moment and think of mental health topics that you have encountered or learned about on social media:
Mental health content on social media spans a wide range of subjects, including stress and burnout, coping and self-care strategies, healthy relationship dynamics, introductions to various therapeutic services and styles, and awareness of mental illnesses and symptoms.
This content can manifest as hashtags (e.g. #MentalHealthMatters, #EndTheStigma), influencers, professionals, or regular users sharing their knowledge and experiences, short-form videos (via TikTok or Reels), long-form videos (via YouTube), or photo carousels (via Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok). Here are three real-world examples:
Rather than gaining information through standardized environments such as educational institutions or professional settings, social media allows adults to engage with information more self-directedly. According to Rubenson (2011), adult education is geared toward adults having agency with their learning, emphasizing learner-driven approaches embedded in everyday activities and contexts. Mental health knowledge encountered through scrolling, peer interaction, and community participation aligns closely with this conception of informal learning.
The emphasis on learner autonomy is reinforced through andragogy and self-directed learning theory. Merriam (2001) describes these as foundational pillars of adult education, noting that adults often initiate and manage their own learning projects. In digital environments, this autonomy is amplified. Adults seek information, evaluate coping strategies, and participate in online discussions without institutional mediation.
Transformative learning theory further deepens this understanding. According to Mezirow, adult learning is a process that begins with a disorienting dilemma and ends in transformative self-reflection, resulting in the transformation of one's perspective (Calleja, 2014). This process involves four key stages:
A crisis or event that challenges our current assumptions, like encountering a post that contradicts long-held beliefs about mental health.
Self-reflecting on our own assumptions, values, and perspectives in response to new or challenging content.
Communication or engagement with others through comment sections, shares, and community discussions to express and discuss different viewpoints.
Adopting a new perspective or viewpoint, like becoming more open to seeking help or reconsidering assumptions about mental illness.
Mezirow (1997) argues that adult learning involves critical reflection on assumptions and the potential transformation of one's frames of reference. Exposure to diverse narratives of anxiety, depression, stigma, and recovery on social media can prompt such reflection. However, transformation is not automatic, it depends on reflective engagement and critical evaluation.
Being exposed to diverse mental health content can challenge or validate preexisting beliefs. Content allows users to self-reflect and examine their positionality (e.g., a TikTok video discussing signs of depression causing a user to reflect on their own experiences). Social media also provides the opportunity to create digital communities, engaging with posts by sharing, liking, or commenting. Even anonymous viewers are part of the dialogue. What users gain can shift their mindset: propelling a more open mind toward seeking help, assuring them they aren't alone, or inspiring further research.
Watch the TED-Ed video "What is depression?" by Helen M. Farrell, then complete the quiz below. This video illustrates how a platform like YouTube can function as an informal institution of adult education, providing an explanation of a mental health condition outside of formal settings.
Continue to Module 2 to explore the benefits and limitations of social media for mental health learning.
A balanced examination of what social media offers and where it falls short as a space for adult mental health education.
With social media entrenched in modern society and serving as a nuanced pillar of communication and connection, most adults will inevitably engage with digital content. However, it is integral that users recognize the benefits and limitations of incorporating social media into their daily lives to foster a healthier relationship with the digitalization of information.
To gain a better understanding of how you view or use social media as a learning tool, let's fill in the following circles!
Instructions: Take a moment to reflect on how social media can be beneficial or limiting, then drag and drop each term from the Word Bank into the correct circle.
Chuang (2021) explains that through online learning, social media users can access information more effectively and flexibly, as learning activities can occur anywhere and at any time. This highlights one of the key benefits of this informal institution: accessibility and convenience. Rather than learners meeting in physical locations with instructors, social media provides various opportunities to learn without those constraints. Additionally, learning through social media is free, which strengthens its accessibility to a wide range of demographics.
This accessibility is especially important for adults learning about mental health. Due to time, cost, and availability of services, adults may refrain from seeking professional help and formal education. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram can help reduce these barriers with convenient, free content that users can engage with at their own pace and according to their specific needs.
Topics that are often stigmatized or induce a sense of vulnerability, such as mental health, can be intimidating to discuss openly. Social media can offer users anonymity to inquire and obtain information by engaging with content without exposing their identities. Naslund et al. (2016) demonstrate that social media platforms can facilitate peer-to-peer mental health support, offering informational and emotional assistance that may reduce stigma and encourage help-seeking. Similarly, Andalibi et al. (2018) show that anonymity within online communities can enable individuals to disclose stigmatized mental health experiences and receive reciprocal support, illustrating how digital spaces function as participatory learning environments grounded in shared lived experience.
Digital literacy is a crucial skill, as misinformation, disinformation, and biases permeate social media algorithms. Platforms hold immense power due to their influence in reshaping education and learning, especially among younger demographics. It's easy to passively process and consume the information provided by social media; however, how often are users actually questioning and examining this content?
Inaccuracies may not be apparent to those without prior knowledge in the given subject, and they can easily fall into the trap of blind acceptance. This underscores how certain syntax or clickbait used in some content can promote misinformation, disinformation, and inherently embedded inequalities that reflect the biases of the groups that engineer these digital platforms. As Careless (2015) discusses, social media is simultaneously beneficial in "developing critical discourse" and awareness, while also being trend- and engagement-driven without real structural change.
An added limitation is that users can't receive professional guidance or feedback regarding their learning. Collins (2004) explains that providing timely feedback leads to successful learning and mastery of content and skills. This is especially crucial for a subject like mental health, where guidance must be tailored to individual needs. Furthermore, relating to certain mental health content could cause some users to self-diagnose, but social media is not a substitute for professional help and expertise.
Professional mental health support offers: proper diagnoses, accurate and reliable information, clarity to prevent misinterpretation, implementation and adjustment of appropriate strategies or treatments, and progress tracking. These cannot be replicated by social media content alone.
Since adult education has an informal and social nature, the benefits and limitations of learning through social media often depend on the user's capacity to interpret and critically analyze content. Consider this example: a TikTok creator describes some signs she experienced that turned out to be symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
A user may relate to all or some aspects of this video, and perhaps use it to seek professional help or to spark further research. However, another person may take this information and immediately assume they have OCD, despite not being professionally diagnosed. This example highlights how the interpretation of content is critical for a valid application of the information shared on social media.
Social media can be a valuable starting point for mental health awareness, but it should not replace professional help. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional.
Head to Module 3 to build your digital literacy toolkit.
Use digital literacy to question credibility and recognize embedded biases, misinformation, and disinformation.
Social media has become a primary platform for the distribution of content, especially mental health information. Users have access to a virtually unlimited range of mental health reels and videos on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and many more (Pennycook & Rand, 2021). However, this abundance of content often leaves users vulnerable to unverified and falsified advice (Yang et al., 2025).
There are concerns about constructive validity, specifically a lack of transparency between the realistic mental health status of individuals and what is portrayed on social media (Chancellor & De Choudhury, 2020). Research has shown that inaccurate health-related content spreads about 70% more abundantly than certified accurate content (Pennycook & Rand, 2021). Only about 9% of influencers and content creators on platforms like TikTok are actually certified (Yang et al., 2025).
The advancement of technology has, in many cases, increased equity, opportunities, and flexibility for adult continuous learning. Constructivist learning implies that in order to effectively learn through digital media, individuals must adapt their abilities to critically evaluate source credibility on virtual platforms (Chuang, 2021). This module will help build the skills to question the reliability and accuracy of digital mental health content.
There are many key terms used when questioning the credibility of information. Try to match the key terms to their correct definitions by dragging each term to its definition. All definitions from Pennycook & Rand (2021).
Social media is a prominent domain for sharing information about mental health. Take a look at these two posts. What are your first thoughts? Are you motivated to believe their claims? Why?
Sample Post 1
Sample Post 2
Using the 7-factor evaluation developed by experts to critically analyze digital mental health content (Yang et al., 2025), examine the credibility of the two posts above. Which post is more or less credible, and why? Consider which criteria each post fulfils or fails.
Here are some media examples that discuss the creator and consumer aspects of social media content credibility on mental health topics.
When you're scrolling through social media, are you more influenced by the actual truth or the claim that reaffirms what you believe? How do these personal biases affect your ability to analyze the red flags of a post? What questions or steps are you going to take before adhering to advice about mental health on social media?
Onward to Module 4 to connect theory to practice.
Throughout this lesson, adult education theories have been at work in the background. In this final module, we make them explicit and examine how each framework helps explain the learning that occurs on social media platforms.
You may have noticed that this lesson didn't just present facts and ask you to memorize them. It asked you to reflect on your own experiences, engage with real social media posts, sort concepts, and evaluate content critically. That design was grounded in a set of adult education theories that explain how and why adults learn. Understanding these theories will help you recognize the learning that is already happening in your daily social media use.
Without a theoretical lens, it is easy to dismiss scrolling through TikTok or reading Reddit threads as unproductive. But adult education theory reveals that genuine learning is happening in these spaces. Merriam (2001) argues that andragogy and self-directed learning are foundational pillars of adult education, and understanding these mechanisms helps us harness them intentionally rather than passively.
Marsick and Watkins (2001) drew a foundational distinction in adult education between three types of learning. Formal learning is structured, institutional, and curriculum-based. Informal learning is self-directed and intentional, but takes place outside formal settings. Incidental learning is a by-product of other activities, often unintentional. Both informal and incidental learning are embedded in everyday life and are largely learner-driven.
Social media reflects the conditions Marsick and Watkins describe. When you actively search YouTube for "how to manage work anxiety," that is informal learning. When you open Instagram to check a friend's story and encounter a therapist's reel about attachment styles that shifts how you think about a relationship, that is incidental learning. Mental health knowledge encountered through scrolling, peer interaction, and community participation aligns closely with their conception of learning as embedded in daily activity rather than organized curricula.
Research on online adult learning further supports this. Gray (2004), studying an online community of practice among adult learning coordinators, found that informal learning in these digital spaces went beyond content acquisition: participants learned the practices, values, and identity of their professional community through shared stories, discussions, and even peripheral participation such as lurking. The online environment reduced the geographic and occupational isolation that had previously limited their access to peers, functioning as what one participant described as "the equivalent of a coffee room" for professionals who otherwise worked alone (Gray, 2004). This finding reinforces that online spaces, including social media, can serve as sites for the kind of embedded, community-based informal learning that Marsick and Watkins describe.
Merriam (2001) identifies andragogy and self-directed learning as the foundational pillars of adult learning theory. The core principle is that adults are not passive recipients of knowledge; they initiate, manage, and direct their own learning based on their needs, interests, and life circumstances.
On social media, this autonomy is amplified. Adults choose which accounts to follow, which communities to participate in, which content to save, and which advice to apply. Rubenson (2011) frames adult education as a self-directed, systematic process that can occur in informal contexts. The way adults curate their social media feeds, selecting who to follow, which communities to join, and which topics to explore, is a concrete example of this self-directed process in action.
Dabbagh and Kitsantas (2012) take this further by arguing that social media tools enable learners to construct what they call Personal Learning Environments (PLEs): individualized platforms through which learners manage their own content, connect to peers, and direct their learning goals across formal and informal contexts. In their framework, the act of curating a social media feed around mental health topics is itself an act of self-regulated learning, where the learner sets goals, monitors progress, and evaluates outcomes. Dabbagh and Kitsantas emphasize that this process is not automatic; learners require the development of personal knowledge management skills, including critical evaluation and self-reflection, in order to use social media effectively as a self-directed learning environment.
However, self-direction does not automatically mean effective learning. As Collins (2004) argues, providing timely feedback leads to successful learning and mastery of content, and for a subject like mental health, guidance must be tailored to individual needs. Social media cannot consistently provide this kind of personalized professional feedback, which is why self-directed learning on these platforms, while powerful, remains incomplete on its own.
Mezirow's (1997) transformative learning theory provides a framework for understanding how social media can change the way people think about mental health. According to Mezirow, learning becomes transformative when it involves critical reflection on assumptions and the potential transformation of one's frames of reference.
Calleja (2014), in a detailed review of Mezirow's conceptualisation, explains transformative learning as a process that moves from a disorienting dilemma through critical reflection and dialogue toward perspective transformation. As we explored in Module 1, these four stages map onto social media experiences: encountering content that challenges assumptions, reflecting on why those assumptions exist, engaging with others in comment sections or communities, and ultimately adopting a new perspective.
Critically, Mezirow (1997) emphasizes that exposure alone is not transformation. Simply seeing a post is not sufficient. The learner must actively reflect on and interrogate their assumptions. Naslund et al. (2016) provide empirical support for how this can happen on social media: they found that peer-to-peer support on these platforms offers informational and emotional assistance that may reduce stigma and encourage help-seeking, creating conditions in which disorienting dilemmas and reflective dialogue can occur naturally.
Andalibi et al. (2018) further demonstrate how the anonymity of online communities enables individuals to disclose stigmatized mental health experiences and receive reciprocal support, interactions that can serve as the kind of dialogue Mezirow describes as essential to perspective transformation. However, as we discussed in Modules 2 and 3, this process depends on the quality of engagement, not just the quantity of content consumed.
Importantly, research confirms that transformative learning can and does occur in online settings. Boyer, Maher, and Kirkman (2006) studied graduate students in a primarily online course and found that approximately one third of participants experienced perspective transformations, moving through disorienting dilemmas, critical reflection, dialogue, and ultimately changes in their beliefs and assumptions. Their findings demonstrate that online environments, when designed to support reflection, self-direction, and collaborative interaction, can facilitate the same depth of transformative learning that Mezirow originally described in face-to-face contexts. This is directly relevant to social media: while platforms like TikTok and Instagram are not formal courses, they can create conditions, through peer interaction, reflective content, and community discussion, in which the phases of transformative learning unfold naturally for engaged users.
Siemens (2005) proposed connectivism as a learning theory for the digital age, arguing that knowledge is no longer stored solely in individual minds or textbooks. Instead, it is distributed across networks of people, technologies, and information systems. Learning, in this framework, is about navigating connections and evaluating the credibility of information encountered across those networks.
Social media exemplifies connectivist learning. Mental health knowledge on these platforms is co-constructed through posts, comments, shared resources, and algorithmically curated feeds. The knowledge is not located in any single source; it emerges through the interactions of the network itself (Siemens, 2005).
This is precisely why the digital literacy skills from Module 3 are essential from a connectivist perspective. Pennycook and Rand (2021) demonstrate that inaccurate health-related content spreads significantly more abundantly than verified accurate content. Yang et al. (2025) found that only about 9% of mental health content creators on platforms like TikTok are actually certified. If knowledge is distributed across networks, then the ability to evaluate credibility within those networks becomes a core learning competency, not an optional add-on.
Chancellor and De Choudhury (2020) add another dimension by highlighting concerns about constructive validity: the gap between what is portrayed about mental health on social media and the realistic mental health status of individuals. Navigating this gap requires exactly the kind of critical network navigation that connectivism foregrounds.
Underpinning the pedagogical design of this entire lesson is constructivism: the idea that knowledge is actively constructed through experience, not passively received from an authority (Chuang, 2021). When you reflected on your own social media habits in Module 1, sorted benefits and limitations in Module 2, evaluated real posts in Module 3, and are now connecting theories to your experience here in Module 4, you were building understanding, not simply downloading it.
Chuang (2021) explains that constructivist learning in digital environments requires individuals to adapt their abilities to critically evaluate what they encounter online. This is not a passive process: it demands that learners actively integrate new information with their existing knowledge and experience, question what does not fit, and revise their understanding accordingly.
Careless (2015) extends this into a social justice framework, noting that social media can foster critical discourse and awareness. However, Careless also identifies a tension: social media is simultaneously engagement-driven and trend-driven, often without producing real structural change. Constructivist learning on social media, then, requires moving beyond passive consumption into active meaning-making, engaging critically with content rather than simply absorbing it.
"Knowledge is constructed through experiences, as opposed to being passively received."
Chuang (2021), on constructivist learningThese five theories are not competing explanations. They are complementary lenses, each illuminating a different dimension of how adults learn about mental health on social media. Marsick and Watkins (2001) explain where this learning happens (in everyday activity). Merriam (2001) and Rubenson (2011) explain who drives it (the learner). Mezirow (1997) and Calleja (2014) explain how deep it can go (through critical reflection and perspective change). Siemens (2005) explains how knowledge flows (across networks). And Chuang (2021) explains how understanding is built (through active experience, not passive reception).
Taken together, this body of literature suggests that social media can be understood as a contemporary informal institution of adult mental health education. It reflects long-established adult education principles: learning that is experiential, self-directed, socially mediated, and potentially transformative. At the same time, the risks identified in Modules 2 and 3, misinformation (Pennycook & Rand, 2021; Yang et al., 2025), algorithmic bias (Careless, 2015), lack of professional feedback (Collins, 2004), and gaps in constructive validity (Chancellor & De Choudhury, 2020), mean that the impact depends on how adults engage with and critically interpret the knowledge circulating within these platforms.
Based on what you've learned across all four modules, match each adult education theory to the social media learning behaviour it most precisely explains. Think carefully; several theories could apply to each scenario, but select the best fit.
One final, important connection: this lesson itself was designed using the same theories it teaches. The reflection prompts invited you to draw on your own experience (constructivism). The self-paced, asynchronous format respected your autonomy as an adult learner (andragogy). The interactive activities asked you to actively build knowledge, not passively receive it (constructivism). The real social media embeds showed you actual content from the networks where this learning happens (connectivism). And we hope that some of the content challenged assumptions you held before starting (transformative learning).
This is what Careless (2015) calls the potential of social media for developing critical discourse: not just learning about something, but learning how to learn in digital spaces. The ability to recognize which type of learning you're doing, and whether you're doing it critically, is a skill that extends far beyond this 60-minute lesson.
Thinking about all five theories, informal/incidental learning, self-directed learning, transformative learning, connectivism, and constructivism, which one resonates most with your own experience of learning about mental health on social media? Describe a specific moment where that theory was "in action" in your life, even if you didn't have a name for it at the time.
You've completed all four modules. Scroll down for the lesson summary.
Social media has emerged as a contemporary informal institution of adult mental health education. It reflects long-established adult education principles: learning is experiential, self-directed, socially mediated, and potentially transformative.
However, digital environments introduce new complexities. The benefits of accessibility, anonymity, and peer support coexist with risks of misinformation, distorted norms, and unequal visibility.
The takeaway is not to avoid social media, but to engage with it critically and reflectively. Adult education scholarship emphasizes not simply access to information, but the development of critical digital literacy and reflective judgment.
Thank you for completing this lesson. We hope it's given you tools to navigate mental health content on social media with greater confidence and discernment.
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