The UBC study analyzed 100 of the most-viewed videos on the app dealing with ADHD, finding that less than half the claims about potential symptoms met the diagnostic criteria.MATTHEW ABBOTT/The New York Times
Misinformation on TikTok could be steering youth toward diagnosing themselves with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by convincing them they are among the growing number of people across the country who have the condition, according a study out of the University of British Columbia.
The UBC study analyzed 100 of the most-viewed videos on the app dealing with the disorder, finding that less than half the claims about potential symptoms made in the videos actually met diagnostic criteria for ADHD.
Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD student in clinical psychology and the lead author of the study, said it was inspired by personal experiences.
“The second author and I found ourselves sending each other a lot of TikToks about ADHD,” Ms. Karasavva said. “We found ourselves asking, ‘hey, do you think the algorithm shows us so many TikToks about ADHD because we are in a lab that studies ADHD?‘ ”
“A lot of the videos we were getting were not really good representations of ADHD, so we decided to be a little more systematic about it and actually test this idea out.”
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder categorized by a difficulty focusing, according to the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada. It affects approximately 1.8 million Canadians, and diagnoses are on the rise across all age groups. One Canadian 2022 study, published in the journal Brain Sciences, found an increase in prevalence of at least 5 per cent across all age groups, with an up to 8.6 per cent increase of ADHD diagnoses in children aged four to 17.
Ms. Karasavva’s research noted TikToks on the subject contained a variety of opinions and personal experiences of users, many of which did not have anything to do with ADHD, but were presented that way. She concluded that this information could lead to young people potentially misdiagnosing themselves.
Kaia Bater, who was diagnosed with ADHD in 2020, around when she first downloaded TikTok, agreed with this assessment. She says the majority of videos she sees online are general and “clickbaity.”
“I find that they almost always start with a hook at the beginning of an extremely common human behaviour or problem, and then will loop you in with ‘Did you know this is actually because of your ADHD?‘ ” said Ms. Bater, a fourth-year University of Ottawa student studying political science and public administration.
“And then typically following is a rambling explanation of how it’s maybe loosely connected.”
One thing that Ms. Karasavva also noted was the volume of TikToks commercializing ADHD, even when sponsored and influencer content was removed from the pool of analyzed videos.
“We only counted people who were directly selling stuff like supplements, or a workbook on how to decorate your house to be disability friendly, or fidget spinners as having financial incentive,” Ms. Karasavva said.
“We probably undercounted, and we still found one in two directly commercializing ADHD.”
Max Zimmerman, a fourth-year computer science major at UOttawa who was diagnosed last year, also sees a lot of sponsored content online.
“The big one is books. Constantly,” said Mr. Zimmerman.
“ADHD, you struggle a lot with motivation. So there’s a lot of books about how to be motivated with ADHD, how to manage your ADHD, and it kind of blends into that self-help stuff.”
Mr. Zimmerman doesn’t necessarily disagree with the presence of ADHD content on TikTok, as he ended up seeking a diagnosis partly because of a YouTube video he watched. However, he says much of the content is too general to be useful.
Ms. Karasavva said she plans to continue to study the phenomenon.
“We are going to investigate the best response from clinicians, because right now clinicians are torn between asking patients to get off of social media for a while, or to give them better information about mental health,” she said.