r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 16d ago

Neuroscience ADHD misinformation on TikTok is shaping young adults’ perceptions. An analysis of the 100 most-viewed TikTok videos related to ADHD revealed that fewer than half the claims about symptoms actually align with clinical guidelines for diagnosing ADHD.

https://news.ubc.ca/2025/03/adhd-misinformation-on-tiktok/
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u/auroraborealis032394 16d ago

Working memory impairment not being diagnostic for ADHD is always a wild one when we know from studies with Wisconsin Card Sort tasks that folks with ADHD perform much worse than non ADHD peers on that task, some of which is related to working memory in addition to abstraction and flexibility/perseverative errors.

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u/pewqokrsf 16d ago

Working memory is effectively attention, it's absolutely wild that attention deficit isn't a symptom of attention deficit disorder.

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u/StoppableHulk 16d ago

This is where sometimes professionals do a bad job of explaining critical differences.

ADHD have a normal capacity for working memory - the potential for it is there - but in practice their memory is always clogged up by the sheer volume of thoughts they have, so they have less available working memory for self-directed tasks they attempt.

And you'll find you have an extraordinary volume of working memory - when you're doing tasks you actually enjoy. Because that's when you're not only focused, you're hyperfocused.

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u/Uturuncu 16d ago

So absolutely true. My memory is not so great, even just remembering to do basic body maintenance tasks like tooth brushing or sometimes even eating just. Don't happen sometimes.

But just the other day there was a thing I did in a video game that was essentially a low-context geography test for the video game's world and hooboy. I did so well at it I was almost embarassed. Why is my geography for a fake world so good when the other day I forgot to go pee and had an accident??

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u/Ninja333pirate 16d ago

It is more like attention dysregulation and not deficit, people with ADHD can pay attention to things, we just can't control what we pay attention to. If I try reading anything too long on a topic my brain is not interested in (even if I actually like the subject) I will get distracted extremely easily, and sometimes even just fall asleep in the middle of the task.

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u/Suyefuji 16d ago

Not entirely. When I was diagnosed with autism, I got a whole battery of neurological testing done and the tests for working memory and attention are different from each other and gave me different results. My attention is average. My working memory is dredging the absolute bottom of the "normal" range.