Dermatologist Dr. Muneeb Shah joined Cheddar News to discuss being named one of TikTok's top 10 creators of 2021. 

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TikTok Dermatologist Named Top 10 Creator of 2021

Come back. Everyone between Bells. I'm Baker Machado in New York from full bone, full grown celebs to viral recipe creators, Tiktok's got it all. But there are some creators who have got the eye of viewers much more than others. In fact, so much that mashable has round up the top 10 people. We couldn't stop watching on Tiktok last year and coming in at number six. On that list is one breakthrough doctor and one of the most influential dermatologists right now on social media, The Durham doctor, as he likes to call himself with over 12 million followers right now on Tiktok dr manning shaw, he's managed to offer a practical skincare recommendations and all you need to keep your skin. Right, look at this. This one comes with a rare trigger warning from the Durham dr account. We may have just witnessed a crime. This guy is bleeding out. This is known as bloodletting and it was used centuries ago, but nowadays is considered to be pseudoscience unless it's used for a real medical condition like hemochromatosis. And even if it was, it would not be done like this, wow! Somebody fix that guy's head. My goodness, joining us right now is the Durham doctor himself, dermatologist, DR minimum doctor. Great to have you here, Congratulations on all the success that you have found on Tiktok. How did you turn being a dermatologist now to being a breakout star on Tiktok, What made you want to go on social media here. Well, it's where people get their information from. So, if that's where people are getting their information from, then we need to be there combating misinformation and creating information for people to consume. And so I looked at it as an opportunity to educate millions of people and it kind of took off from there. So it's I love my day job and my night job is creating content for the rest of the world to see what I do during the day. Okay, so what's sort of the strategy when you find a video are you, how long does it take you to maybe think of what you're going to talk about? Are you searching for other particular things that you find to be interesting? What sort of your methodology when you're making a video here? So when I first started creating content, I was just creating stuff that I had seen in clinic, talking about skincare tips, talking about dermatology diseases that we see and how to treat them. And then as my audience grew, people started to tag me in the videos they wanted me to respond to and they wanted to learn about. So initially I was creating content that was just completely de novo. And now I'm responding to content that people are constantly tagging me and they want to know what my opinion is on different things that are going viral on Tiktok. And so that's kind of how I respond. I actually just go to my ads for my tags when people tag me and I create content based on what I've tagged in and I do this every day in clinic. So it's really just me communicating what I do on a daily basis. So it's really not a huge leap from what I do day to day in clinic. Do you also feel like in many ways because like a lot of people don't go to the dermatologist, you almost feel like this is some, some sort of educational outlet for a lot of people who maybe don't have an outlet here to see a dermatologist. Absolutely. So Tiktok is a global platform, more than probably any other platform is where a lot of times, like on instagram or even Youtube, you go viral in the, in the country that you live in or in the language that you speak. But in Tiktok you could be going viral in multiple different countries, multiple different languages at the same time. And so a lot of these people don't have access to a dermatologist. And so sometimes their first representation of dermatology is maybe a video that they've seen of me and then that may encourage them to go see a dermatologist or seek out care. But yeah, a lot of people don't have this access. And so it's really trying to democratize information, which is why I actually spread out from Tiktok to Youtube because I felt in that 15 to 60 seconds that I couldn't give enough information for those people that were seeking that information. And so I started to create longer videos, 15, 20 minute videos on Youtube and that's also taken off because I think there's A real need and desire for this information out there. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because just yesterday Tiktok announced they're now extending their videos not to 10 minutes. Do you feel like that is going to really help you since you're doing these longer videos on YouTube here? Yeah. They extended to three minutes in the past and I'm not, you know, I think people that use Tiktok, they want quick information in a short period of time. And so there are some videos, If you do like a vlog style video, you're communicating long form content. You can do 3 to 10 minutes. It's hard to keep someone focused on that screen for that long without them swiping up to the next, more interesting video. And so I think it's gonna, it's gonna have trouble converting to 10 minutes personally. I like to keep my videos 15-30 seconds. I think that's where the attention span is. And I really just try to deliver jam packed information that amount of time that people can act on. And so I can't tell you everything about acting in 15 seconds. But I can tell you at least one fact that you may be able to act on in the future. I love that already. So while we have the doctor in the office right now, What are some of the worst skin practices that you're seeing on Tiktok that people should be avoiding right now. Yeah, I think right now it's winter right. So at least in a lot of places it's winter right now. So skin is dry, the barrier is damaged. And so you may want to over exfoliate or kind of scrub the skin or use like a sharp blade to try to exfoliate the dead skin off all of that is actually going to damage your skin barrier. That top layer of the skin is really protecting you from the environment. It's protecting your skin from drying out and losing water to the environment. And so basically don't do any of those things that are going to disrupt that skin barrier. I always look at the skin barrier like a blessing. And a lot of people want to do things like poke little holes in it or you know, to shave off that top layer of the skin or use chemical exfoliant that over exfoliate the skin. And so just respect your skin barrier, especially in the winter. Do things that are hydrating and detective rather than things that are going to damage that skin barrier. Especially with the, it's interesting because also people love the gross stuff. Also when you're like picking at zits and and all that stuff like we just saw right there at least makes really interesting content. Dermatologist. Dr Bennett shot such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us.