Hi, this is Flora Lichtenen and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today in the show, how TikTok is shaping our understanding of ADHD.

Mental illness exists on a spectrum.

So when you have creators who present their own personal experiences as a size one-feet-all solution, this is kind of

very flat.

If you're on TikTok, you know that the app is more than just silly dance trends, cat videos,

and makeup tutorials.

It's also a place where people with shared experiences or identities find each other.

And one of those communities has formed around ADHD.

If you're a part of that TikTok world, you have probably seen dozens of videos like this.

Five less well-known ADHD behaviors with doodles. Let's go.

Number one, listening to the same song on repeat until you are sick of it.

Due to your mimicking spirit, you will find yourself absorbing others' accents.

Feeling that everyone hates you, they're secretly talking behind your back, that you're not good enough.

Sitting in your car for a really long time before you go into your house. And this is because ADHD

often struggle with switching tasks. Our next guest noticed these videos popping up on her feed,

and she decided to use her clinical psychology expertise to try to understand this phenomenon better.

She analyzed the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess how accurate they are and how young people respond to them.

Here's my conversation from March of this year with Vasalia Karasava, PhD student in clinical psychology at the University

of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Vasilya, welcome to Science Friday.

Hi, thank you for having me.

Okay, for those of us who are not on TikTok, just give us a taste of what these videos are like.

...