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.

[u/mvea]

https://news.ubc.ca/2025/03/adhd-misinformation-on-tiktok/

[u/whitetooth86]

"If they've got a diagnosis, they can blame their personal failures on that diagnosis. Like, "I'm struggling with school/work/relationships because I've got ADHD/autism/whatever," rather than, "I'm struggling because I'm not applying myself."

Basically, life is hard and people don't want to feel like they're just failing to meet the challenge, they want to feel like they're playing on a higher difficulty and that's why they can't "win."

Source: Am guilty of feeling that way myself."

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Care to elaborate?

As it stands, this reads as personal bias and anecdotal experience rather than an evidence-based understanding of ADHD, autism, or neurodivergence. You present a false dichotomy, psychologically project, and over simplify.

It misrepresents the reality of these conditions, conflating legitimate struggles with excuse-making. While it's true that some individuals might externalize blame unproductively, that is not exclusive to neurodivergent people—everyone does it to some degree. The core issue here for you seems to be internalized ableism and misunderstanding of cognitive science, not whether people are being "lazy."

You did exactly what this thread and tiktok video misinformation is about.

[u/WingsofRain → u/whitetooth86]

Yeah that was bothering me too with their wording. I was formally diagnosed with ADHD - inattentive type a little over 10 years ago by my psychiatrist, and the entire point of getting diagnosed is to know what tools you need to better succeed in life. ADHD is still a disability that very much impedes cognitive function to one degree or another (dependent on the person) and it’s not an excuse by any means, but rather a reason as to why it’s much more difficult for people with ADHD to function at the same level as someone deemed neurotypical. ADHD is a legitimate disability, it’s life-altering, and can easily be life-destroying if you don’t have the support and/or resources to learn how to work around it.

[u/whitetooth86 → u/WingsofRain]

Thank you, I even have trouble with the comment above it as well. I actually think they might be the ones who don't understand the terms neurodivergent and neurotypical and the real life implications of diagnoses. Having a real hard time parsing out "At best, it could be people are wildly misinterpreting 'neurodiverse' to mean 'thinks and feels differently to most other people', in which case yes, about half the population would count. The options aren't 'neurodiverse' and 'neuroaverage', though, or even 'neuro-what-you've-seen-in-the-media'. Everybody is different, everybody has struggles and weaknesses, everybody's brain and emotions have weird janky bits that get in the way of real life.

But I feel like there's some major cultural or generational thing that I just don't get, that means so many people actively want a specific diagnosis, for no reason that I can tell. "

[u/Syssareth → u/whitetooth86]

I'm talking about people trying to self-diagnose, like, watching TikTok videos and going, "Hey, I've got that!"

I'm not talking about people genuinely trying to get help.

[u/ifyoulovesatan → u/Syssareth]

Regardless of who you're talking about, you're still basically talking out of your ass and generalizing your experience to a ton of people whom you have no real insight about.

[u/Syssareth → u/ifyoulovesatan]

You're reading way too much into a pithy aside. My "source" was meant to be an admission that I'm guilty of the same thing I was talking about and therefore wasn't speaking from a high horse, not that I live in a vacuum and have never used my eyes.

But fine, if you want the details: I'm speaking not only from my own singular experience, but from reading way too many posts/comments/notes* in various places on the internet over the years. I have been on the internet since before Myspace was a thing; you start noticing patterns after a while, and like especially recognizes like. (And thank heavens I grew out of that phase.)

(*Edit: Not one-offs like on Reddit; I read a lot of stories, and sometimes the authors leave notes with each chapter, so you can get a pretty good sense of who they are over the course of the story.)

There are absolutely people--often teenagers, not always--who collect self-diagnoses like stamps, and it's not a minuscule number (a minuscule percentage, I'm sure, but not in raw numbers). Critical thinking allows you to separate this person who apologizes for being late posting a chapter of a story, and who sometimes speaks about their struggles with ___ and trying to get on an even keel, and that person with a dozen disorders listed on their profile page who only ever mentions them in a defensive context (e.g., "It's not my fault, you can't get mad at me, I've got ___!") Yes, a single occurrence means nothing, but it's a pattern I've seen again and again and again.

[u/ifyoulovesatan → u/Syssareth]

You realize you're in the science subreddit, which has specific a rule against anecdotal evidence in comments, right?

Edit: the rest of your comment is just you justifying why your anecdotal evidence is somehow special / more rigorous than other people's. Which is just really dumb, I dunno what else to call it.