TikTok Is Shaping How We Think About ADHD

Mental health information on social media can be both revelatory and misleading. How do clinicians and their patients make sense of it?

TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health content—often short, grabby, first-person videos detailing symptoms for conditions like ADHD and autism. But what does this mean for teens and young adults who spend hours a day scrolling?

A new study published in PLOS One analyzes the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess both how accurate they are and how young people respond to them. Researchers found that about half of the videos were inaccurate or missing key context, and that the more TikToks young adults watched, the less critical they were of the content.

For some, watching social videos about mental health conditions led them to better understand themselves and eventually get a proper diagnosis and treatment. For others it made them consider if they have conditions they don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with the lead author of the ADHD TikTok study, Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD Student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia; and Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein, director of psychology, neuropsychology, and social work at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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