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/New_Rabbit_5041 16d ago

As someone who was formally diagnosed with ADD (yes, back when that was still a thing) in childhood, accessing coping skills and community on the internet has been infinitely more helpful than navigating the American health system, which seems explicitly designed to make those with support needs fail to or not even try to access care.

Research, therapy, medication, and accurate diagnoses are all incredibly useful tools. But they aren’t as developed or accessible or even goddamn functional as some of us seem to think. They’re also full of and founded on biases that fail to account for many peoples’ experiences.

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u/Geno0wl 15d ago

They’re also full of and founded on biases that fail to account for many peoples’ experiences.

biases like how a lot of developmental disorders' symptoms are more or less how young white boys present. That is why ADHD in young girls is seemingly almost never caught.

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u/Pleasant_Fennel_5573 15d ago

Absolutely. The diagnostic criteria still seems to center their ways in which we inconvenience and annoy our parents/teacher/bosses/spouses. There’s just not as much weight placed on our experience of living with this brain and how it feels from the inside.

I’m not surprised that people talking about their experiences don’t fit the criteria. Some of the information is bound to be incorrect, but there’s also a problem with a diagnostic criteria that hasn’t adapted beyond centering the parents.

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u/Jobysco 15d ago

Same…late 90’s for me and I was diagnosed with ADD.

But I also think at one point it became “trendy” to say you have ADD/ADHD and a lot of videos I see of people talking about ADHD are things that most people even without ADHD do with a title like “ADHD brain be like:”

Anything one could consider quirky is a symptom to a lot of these ADHD “influencers”