There is a big, seeming North American sentiment that children are incapable of functioning without an adult and need to be protected at all times, rather than fostering their capability for independence. This is not to say you don't watch over them, but they have the capacity to learn from the world just as you do.
TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
231–240 of 664 posts
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?"
Source: I've been diagnosed with severe ADHD on 4 occasions(mostly retests for due diligence reasons after switching psychiatrist) Generally by having a full workup with a psychiatrist. They will do various interviews. Possibly might have to interview parents and teachers in pediatric cases or in adult cases where ADHD was not diagnosed in childhood(childhood onset is a diagnostic requirement for adult ADHD). In more…
What would be the diagnosis for adult-onset ADHD symptoms without a childhood history of those symptoms?
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#233It feels as though our society has collectively forgotten that mental illness can be socially transmissible. I remember in 00s there seemed to be mainstream acknowledgement and concern that anorexia and distorted perception of one's body can be socially transmissible, ripping through teen social cliches particularly, and could be spread through the internet by "pro-ana" websites and chat groups. I don't hear much abo…
The bar also got a lot lower than back then. You jump over the gaps in the tiles on the road? You must have OCD. You broke up with your bf/gf.. you must have depression. You're happy a bit? Bipolar disorder. You're a guy and play with a barbie... trans. Less horny, asexual. And let's not forget a bunch of adhd/autism and other disorders, when a kid gets bored in school. On the other hand, we have professionals (docto…
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#234I can't stop seeing the heavy gender skew in online communities centred around these topics. Both the sexual orientation as well as mental disorder communities like this seem to be most popular among teenager or young adult women. As a man I don't know how teenage hormones affect girls different than boys at that age, so I can't even give an uneducated guess as to what could be the source of this attraction towards q…
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly matters: Many kids watching TikTok also start imagining wrong things about their sexuality. Apparently up to 25% of the upcoming zoomers identify as LGBTQ. Obviously, biological, empirical nonsense. Turns out most of it is absolute imagination yet many start to undergo hormone therapy etc immediately. There's a whole detrans movement of such folks who regret doing such, often irreversible, massive damage…
> start imagining ... things about their sexuality So they're exploring their sexuality, and you think this is wrong? I remember questioning my sexuality as a teenager... in the 90's, long before the internet functionally existed for me. > imagining wrong things ... biological, empirical nonsense Oh. Nevermind. You've already decided to cast normal behavior and questions as immoral, so I'll never change your mind.
I may or may not have, but that aside "wrong" as I used it here clearly means "factually wrong", not "morally wrong".
I'm not disputing that there are legitimate cases.
Simply saying the sheer spike in it from one generation to the next should make any rational person smell the rotten tuna.
I even have 1st hand experience with it: My teenie brother who thought for about 1-2 years he was trans and even considered biological sex change but as he matured a little realized that nah he's just gay.
Fact is kids and teens are actually dumb and don't know a lot about human psychology and physiology. They don't understand for example that simply being a little on the feminine side as a man or vice versa doesn't make you trans. And it ruins lives - primarily their own!
We should not act, as adults and parents, like we don't know better than them at least in 99% of the cases.
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#236I recently discovered "systems" people via Reddit (r/SystemsCringe) will searching for systems engineering. The core belief seems to be that the individual has "multiple people" living in the same body. They've devised a whole language for talking about it as well[0]. This reminds me of the "otherkin" fad that occurred primarily on Tumblr about a decade ago[1]. It was where teenagers believed themselves to not be hum…
Try reading up on plural systems before you make such judgements. And don't hang around /r/SystemsCringe; it's a hate sub. Otherkin is not a fad, and it's not confined to Tumblr; it's been around for decades, all over the net and real-life society. There's considerable overlap between otherkin and furry; otherkin is basically furry for fictional species. Anyway, furry/otherkin and plural people read and post here to…
Reactions like the GP are why we prefer to be more tactical about plurality in public. We've found it's better to be seen as an expert in your field AND THEN be more safe with talking about plurality topics than it is to be a vocal example of being plural and then having to fight uphill to be seen as an expert in things. Stigma is a bitch and a half to deal with.
We'd like to think that our writing and advocacy helps destignatize our form of existence in some way, but we have no way to track that other than the occasional kind comment. Maybe this job will be the one where we are more honest and open about plurality, but we've also found that it's an ultimate relationship strength test like coming out as transgender to people (I'm pretty sure it's why my brother refuses to talk to me). We don't want to lose more people, so we have defaulted to this quietly, but accurately describing how we experience reality thing and not emphasizing it too much. The blog is a team effort ;)
Interestingly enough, I've found that plural people tend to understand distributed systems problems at a much more intuitive level than others. It's to the point that if I was ever building out an SRE team to handle distributed systems problems, I'd probably try and hire as many plural people as I can and make them accommodated to the best of my ability so that we can leverage that innate talent in ways that were previously undoable. Maybe some day I'll get my wish, but not any time soon it seems.
Personally I'd say that otherkin and furry have overlaps but are not fundamentally the same thing. Think of it as the difference between being a fan of baseball games and aspiring to be a baseball player. They are in similar veins (both baseball related), but they are wholly separate things. Being furry and being otherkin are similarly different. I can ask around for a resource if you want, if you want to reach out privately please email me at xeiaso dot net.
I'd second the suggestion to avoid hate groups like /r/systemscringe, nothing good can come of it but continuing the cycle of needless hate. I'd like to think that people on this website are rational and can overcome the innate tribalistic feelings that those hate groups capitalize on, but I can wish in one hand and spit in the other then see which one fills up faster.
"Furries run the internets", and as a result the tech side of the furry fandom gives you a vast professional networking opportunity that you could never really get anywhere else. It makes fiscal sense to be a furry if you value having a large professional reach.
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#237It feels as though our society has collectively forgotten that mental illness can be socially transmissible. I remember in 00s there seemed to be mainstream acknowledgement and concern that anorexia and distorted perception of one's body can be socially transmissible, ripping through teen social cliches particularly, and could be spread through the internet by "pro-ana" websites and chat groups. I don't hear much abo…
It's taboo to criticise such movements because by extension you criticise those that actually have the illness. And some movements have grown quite powerful politically. If you allude that it's problematic to let children change sex, you are painted as anti lgbtixxxx. Activism has won against science.
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 diagnos…
This is constantly presented as some sort of ultimate validation of these disorders and every time I read it I'm absolutely baffled. Stimulants used in ADHD medication improve focus and productivity for almost everyone, the fact that they also do it for people with chronic focus/attention issues should be surprising to no one... They're literally performance enhancing drugs.
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medical diagnosis are man made labels created by committee. If I say having blond hair is a medical condition then I can absolutely do a falsifiable test of whether you have blond hair. So the issue isn't so much falsifiability per see but instead the whether you trust the judgement of people who decide what is "normal" or "not normal".
Diagnoses are defined through research. The committee part is just about updating diagnostic manuals to reflect current consensus. New diagnoses need to be proven to be distinct entities(i.e not redundant) and clinically meaningful. And they specifically need to have a diagnostic test. Having blond hair has a diagnostic test, sure, but that diagnostic test does not in itself constitute a distinct, clinically useful d…
And whether something is clinically useful isn't the standard for defining a condition, because ability to successfully treat a disease isn't a standard in deciding whether something is a disease and because therapy isn't limited to people who have diseases. (Unless professionals are now calling marital problems a disease?)
Re: TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm responding to the claim that it's easy for doctors to falsify a false claim of ADHD from somebody who's drug seeking and has been coached online to say the right things to the doctor. This doesn't seem to be the case. ADHD may be real, but doctors seem to have a hard time distinguishing people who actually have it from people who just want the drugs and know what to tell the doctor because they watched a bunch of…
Again, this is not unique to ADHD. None of those other things I mentioned can be detected by a chemical analysis either. And morphine is as big - if not bigger - problem than amphetamines.