"I Was Told to Come Back and Share This": Social Media-Based Near-Death Experience Disclosures as Expressions of Spiritual Beliefs

TL;DR

This study examines how TikTok users share near-death experiences, revealing that spiritual themes are prevalent and foster community engagement, highlighting social media's role in spiritual expression and connection.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of NDE disclosures on TikTok, showing how these narratives promote spiritual exploration and community interaction.

Findings

Spiritual themes dominate NDE videos on TikTok.

Videos with spiritual content attract more engagement.

Online platforms facilitate community-based spiritual expression.

Abstract

People who experienced near-death events often turn to personal expression as a way of processing trauma and articulating beliefs. While scholars have examined how individuals share near-death experiences (NDEs), limited research has explored how these narratives are communicated collaboratively on today's social media platforms. We analyzed 200 randomly sampled TikTok videos tagged with #nde and related hashtags. Content analysis revealed that individuals often use NDE narratives to articulate personal meaning, with spiritual and religious themes appearing in the majority of posts and serving as a means of exploring and making sense of personal spiritual perspectives. Consistent with this, analyses of comment sections reveal that videos containing spiritual themes tend to attract more engagement and foster deeper conversations around faith and meaning. Our findings offer insights into how online platforms facilitate community-level engagement with spirituality, and suggest implications for design of spaces that support shared expression and connection in specialized communities.