New Research: Is Social Media Reshaping Mental Health Authority in South Africa?

By Dr. Rejoice Malisa-van der Walt

In an environment where mental health is highly mythologised and stigmatised, along with significant barriers in accessibility and affordability, where do young South Africans turn to for their mental health support?

There are reports on South African youth migrating to unregulated digital platforms for mental health support, bypassing trained professionals and exposing themselves to an unmonitored information ecosystem that is operating without robust national medical governance frameworks.

To establish the actual rate of migration from conventional mental health services to digital platforms and its impact on trust and credibility of conventional medical authority among South African youth, the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa (CINIA)‘s Dr. Rejoice Malisa-van der Walt (PhD), and the Patson Malisa Foundation‘s Patson Malisa conducted an empirical study entitled:

Reconfiguring Mental Health Authority in the Global South. Mapping of Influencer Knowledge, Misinformation and Perception Shifts: A South African case study.

Their research findings were presented at the Digital Mental Health International Conference 2026 in Hong Kong, held on the 16th to 18th of June 2026.

Key Insights From the Study:

• Trust in conventional medical authorities: There is an increase in migration towards digital platforms for mental health support by South African youth; however, their trust in conventional mental health professionals is still high, as they find them credible compared to unconventional digital medical influencers.
• The Information Overload Effect: As young people are bombarded by massive, unregulated platform mental health information, they eventually suffer from the “information overload” effect. As a result, they are overwhelmed and fail to assess the credibility of the information they are exposed to.
• The Hybrid Solution: While South African youth’s reliance on digital platforms and professional medical influencers for initial education and support is high, however, they still view traditional clinical interventions as the gold standard for formal diagnosis and complex care.

The Way Forward

The study recommends strategic mental health digitisation of mental health support that can benefit young South Africans. Through the implementation of digital mental healthcare governance frameworks, compliance tools, and onboarding vetted mental health professionals directly onto social platforms to improve natural content algorithms.

Further Reading

1. In a chapter titled ‘Child and adolescent mental health and the digital world: A double-edged sword‘ for South African Child Gauge Rachana Desai and Patrick Burton interrogate the impact of digital worlds on children’s mental health.
2. In article titled ‘Health information in age of social media and influence’ for The BMJ, Tina D Purnat and David Scales explore how health conversations now unfold in commercialised spaces that mix expertise, entrepreneurship, and entertainment.