TikTok Is Shaping How We Think About ADHD

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.5 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:11.2	This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichten.
0:14.7	Today in the podcast, self-diagnosis by TikTok, what could go wrong?
0:19.5	We found that the young adults who watched more TikToks
0:22.3	about ADHD were less critical of them. If you're on TikTok, you know that the app is more
0:31.7	than just silly dance trends, cat videos, and makeup tutorials. It's also a place where people
0:37.1	with shared experiences or identities
0:39.4	find each other. And one of those communities has formed around ADHD. If you're a part of that
0:45.9	TikTok world, you have probably seen dozens of videos like this. Five less well-known ADHD behaviors
0:52.9	with doodles. Let's go. Number one, listening to the same
0:56.0	song on repeat until you are sick of it. Due to your mimicking spirit, you will find yourself
1:02.8	absorbing others' accents. Feeling that everyone hates you, they're secretly talking behind your
1:10.0	back, that you're not good enough.
1:12.0	Sitting in your car for a really long time before you go into your house. And this is because
1:15.8	ADHDs often struggle with switching tasks. Our next guest noticed these videos popping up on her
1:22.2	feed and she decided to use her clinical psychology expertise to try to understand this phenomenon better.
1:28.7	She analyzed the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess how accurate they are and how young people respond to them.
1:37.9	Joining me now is Vasilya Karasava, a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
1:45.0	Vasilya, welcome to Science Friday.
1:47.0	Hi, thank you for having me.
1:50.0	Okay, for those of us who are not on TikTok, just give us a taste of what these videos are like.
1:56.0	Was that clip representative? Like, who's making them and what's the format?
	...

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