A growing number of Arab teenagers are turning to TikTok and othear social media platforms when they want advice about anxiety, stress or low moods, rather than speaking to a therapist, a school counsellor or even their own family. A UAE-based startup called Elggo says this trend points to a real gap in how emotional wellbeing is supported across the region.
The concern is straightforward. When a young person cannot find a way to talk about how they feel at home or at school, social media becomes the place they go for answers, and that is rarely a reliable or safe source for mental health guidance.
The problem is not silence
Elggo’s co-founders, Mirna Mneimneh and Luma Makari, argue that the issue is not that Arab youth refuse to discuss mental health. In their view, this generation is more aware than any before it. Young people today recognise anxiety and burnout, and they have the vocabulary to describe what they are going through.
What holds many of them back, the founders say, is not shame. It is a worry about making a conversation awkward, or about being seen as the weak one in the room. So instead of opening up, they stay quiet and look for answers elsewhere.
Why imported models fall short
For years, mental health support across the Arab world has often been built on Western models, translated into Arabic and applied to communities with very different family structures and social expectations.
Mneimneh, who is CEO of Elggo, says those clinical frameworks are not wrong, they are simply incomplete. They were designed for individualistic cultures and delivered in English. In many Arab societies, a young person’s sense of wellbeing is closely tied to family, community and a feeling of belonging. A system that treats only the individual, the founders argue, misses an important part of the picture.
Language is part of the same problem. Makari, who is Elggo’s chief information officer, says a Western app simply translated into Arabic is not the same as one that is culturally relevant. Many AI-based wellbeing tools are trained mostly on English-language data, which makes them less able to pick up the emotional meaning carried in Arabic dialects. Elggo says its own AI was trained on Arabic datasets rather than translated material, so it can read what a teenager writes in dialect more accurately.
Prevention as part of the school day
Elggo describes its platform as a mix of wellbeing education, AI-supported learning paths and clinical oversight, built specifically for Arab youth. The company works with schools across the region and says it has reached more than 17,000 young people in six countries.
Its core idea is that mental health support should not only mean therapy or crisis help. The founders believe prevention should be part of everyday learning, with wellbeing taught during the school day like any other subject, free of clinical labels or drama, simply as lessons in how the mind works.
They credit the UAE with moving faster than much of the region, noting that schools here are now assessed on wellbeing standards and that policy frameworks around student mental health are taking shape. The awareness and the policy exist, they say. What still needs to catch up is the support infrastructure.
The shortage is significant. According to the founders, the GCC has fewer than one therapist for every 100,000 people, and under 10 per cent of those work with adolescents. As they put it, you cannot solve a ratio of one counsellor to hundreds of students simply by hiring more people, which is why they believe prevention has to come first.
The startup was shaped in part by the founders’ own background growing up in Lebanon, where they saw the psychological effects of instability and trauma, including after the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
What this means for students
For students, the takeaway is a caring one. Feeling anxious, stressed or overwhelmed is common, and it is not a sign of weakness. Social media can make problems feel either bigger or smaller than they really are, and it is not a substitute for proper support.
If something is weighing on you, the better step is to talk to someone you trust, such as a parent, a teacher, a school counsellor or a qualified professional. Schools in the UAE increasingly have wellbeing support in place, and reaching out early is far easier than waiting for things to build up.
Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/lifestyle/arab-youth-mental-health-western-models-elggo-uae
