TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#11

Post by kzrdude » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #7

overthemoon wrote: post #5

Tik Tok is the reason I've been told several times I have ADHD. Pretty sure I don't! This phenomenon is so infuriating. The only half-convincing defense I've heard of it is that it could, maybe, theoretically, disseminate information about illnesses to people who don't have the money to see a professional, but the other effects are so much worse it doesn't seem worth it.

Tiktok and pop-culture generally make me very skeptical on "ADHD", the so-called "spectrum" and "neurodivergence" generally. I'm not saying these things don't exist, but much of it seems very difficult to falsify -- which needs to be the gold standard of determining these sort of things; e.g. "By what process can someone reasonably determine that they are NOT neurodivergent?"

Part of this is just giving labels to what happens when we are glued to screens and addictive apps and internet media, isn't it? It strikes me as something that is partly happening to me too, I can't really put down the addictive medias available. Of course things in professional or personal life may suffer when you have an addiction. Of course medication could help one control it, etc.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#12

Post by girvo » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #8

This reminds me of every other student while taking Abnormal Psychology in college.

Or how a tonne of kids (including my friends as I was a kid too) used to diagnose everyone and ourselves with “depression” back in the forums and MySpace days. Sure some of us ended up with real diagnoses, like myself (after some pretty severe impact from it), but a non zero amount of it seemed to be about being trendy and fitting in with the group and zeitgeist. This appears similar. Humans like pattern matching, and young people have enough knowledge about mental health topics to be “dangerous” in this case.

This is a long winded way of me saying I agree, and this doesn’t seem like a particularly new phenomenon.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#13

Post by NoblePublius » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

It’s this kind of content that reminds me that if social media censors were actually interested in keeping safe people with mental problems, they wouldn’t police content so much as they would prevent such people from using their poisonous systems.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#14

Post by kzrdude » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

nippoo wrote: post #9

Related: medical students' disease! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease

One item in the article is:

+ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 1392: bad argument #1 to 'pairs' (table expected, got nil).

That's new to me. I didn't know wikipedia had adopted lua for its templates.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#15

Post by nemo44x » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers.

With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to untold bad influences, etc.

It’s no wonder so many kids think they have mental disorders or any of the other mind viruses going around.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#16

Post by kortex » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #7

overthemoon wrote: post #5

Tik Tok is the reason I've been told several times I have ADHD. Pretty sure I don't! This phenomenon is so infuriating. The only half-convincing defense I've heard of it is that it could, maybe, theoretically, disseminate information about illnesses to people who don't have the money to see a professional, but the other effects are so much worse it doesn't seem worth it.

Tiktok and pop-culture generally make me very skeptical on "ADHD", the so-called "spectrum" and "neurodivergence" generally. I'm not saying these things don't exist, but much of it seems very difficult to falsify -- which needs to be the gold standard of determining these sort of things; e.g. "By what process can someone reasonably determine that they are NOT neurodivergent?"

> much of it seems very difficult to falsify

It's quite straightforward, albeit involved (as in technically easy, but takes time) to falsify. You have to work with a licensed medical professional who will evaluate traits, strengths, and difficulties, and to what extent they impact functioning as a person in society. Basically, are they "well-adjusted"? If they make it through school, college and adulthood without a ton of struggling, therapy, possibly meds, you can almost certainly rule out neurodivergence (at the very least, it won't be clinically significant )

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#17

Post by ominous » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #10

h2odragon wrote: post #2

Reminds me of "WebMD caused a spike in cancer" stories; anyone remember those?

And video games cause violence, and DnD leads to Satanism, and TV rots brains, and movies lead to illiteracy, and books lead to dangerous thought.

> video games cause violence

They don't. Nothing harmful can come out of reading a book.

> DnD leads to Satanism

It can't, ever. No subculture can wander so close to satanism that would lead their elements to coopt it.

> TV rots brains

It doesn't. There's no way of consuming TV that has a negative impact on people.

> movies lead to illiteracy

They don't. Having the choice of a movie never prevented anyone from having to practice spending time learning to consume literature.

> books lead to dangerous thought

They don't. Nothing dangerous can be transmited in print.

Well done, everything is harmless.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#18

Post by yathaid » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #10

h2odragon wrote: post #2

Reminds me of "WebMD caused a spike in cancer" stories; anyone remember those?

And video games cause violence, and DnD leads to Satanism, and TV rots brains, and movies lead to illiteracy, and books lead to dangerous thought.

What you are saying is a false root cause, i.e. "TikTok causes rare mental disorders". Which is not what OP is saying.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#19

Post by brink » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #15

For all of human history across every culture, parents would do what they could to keep their kids away from “bad influences”. You move to certain areas, go to certain places, are members of certain organizations etc. which serve to socialize your kids with kids from families that have shared values. You don’t talk to strangers. With the internet and especially media like TikTok parents are exposing their kids to unt…

No post body was provided.

Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)

#20

Post by DoughnutHole » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #7

overthemoon wrote: post #5

Tik Tok is the reason I've been told several times I have ADHD. Pretty sure I don't! This phenomenon is so infuriating. The only half-convincing defense I've heard of it is that it could, maybe, theoretically, disseminate information about illnesses to people who don't have the money to see a professional, but the other effects are so much worse it doesn't seem worth it.

Tiktok and pop-culture generally make me very skeptical on "ADHD", the so-called "spectrum" and "neurodivergence" generally. I'm not saying these things don't exist, but much of it seems very difficult to falsify -- which needs to be the gold standard of determining these sort of things; e.g. "By what process can someone reasonably determine that they are NOT neurodivergent?"

Well the problem with ADHD is the same problem of pretty much all psychological disorders - diagnosis is only ever really fuzzily falsifiable.

You get diagnosed with it if you tick enough of the boxes of behaviours/dysfunctions associated with it - you can fall short of a diagnosis by one behaviour and still be in a very similar condition to a diagnosed person, or tick enough boxes but fall short based on the diagnosing physicians judgement of severity.

The interesting thing is that despite the condition being composed of a wide gamut of seemingly unrelated behaviour, ~90% of people with ADHD respond extremely well to the same treatment - stimulant medication. We also observed notable neurological similarities in aggregate among people with the condition, but not enough to have much utility as a diagnostic tool.