A popular trend: labelling yourself using TikTok
These days using TikTok and Instagram to self-diagnose ADHD, autism or depression is a popular trend. But what are the caveats? “Anyone can claim that drinking a bottle of gin every day helps manage your ADHD.”
A young man in his twenties – baseball cap, white hoodie – sits in front of the camera, twiddling his thumbs. He says he has ADHD paralysis. His head is bursting with thoughts, but his body is frozen – and all because a delivery man is coming to deliver a parcel later that afternoon. This is so familiar, one astonished viewer comments below the TikTok video. “I have that too, but I thought I was just lazy.”
According to the Coronavirus Health Monitor for Young Adults put out by the Municipal Public Health Service (GGD) and RIVM, in 2022, more than half of young adults (16 to 25 years old) in the Netherlands said they suffered from psychological difficulties. Last year, the organisation recruited almost 70,000 young people through social media and offline channels to take part in the survey. Nearly two-thirds of the young adults surveyed said they were lonely, with half of the young people suffering from psychological complaints stating that they had suffered from suicidal thoughts ‘occasionally’ to ‘very often’. These thoughts were more common in women and young adults living alone. One caveat is that young people with poorer mental health may have registered to take part in the study more often.
The General Practitioners Practice AUAS/UvA on the Oude Turfmarkt previously stated in Folia that the number of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 with psychological complaints had more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. The total number of patients of the practice, however, remained virtually unchanged. In 2021, general practitioners registered a total of 506 young people with mental health complaints, ranging from anxiety, stress and nervousness to feelings of depression, insomnia, panic attacks and long-term depression. According to the doctors, the increase was not entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic: in 2019, 478 young people had already come in with mental health problems.
The creator of the video is Connor DeWolfe, an American TikTok star (over five million followers) who makes videos about ADHD and depression. He is not only one: the number of ‘mental health advocates’ on social media such as TikTok and Instagram has increased rapidly in recent years. They describe symptoms and provide tips for depression, OCD, autism, separation anxiety or trauma. There are videos or posts about practically everything – and you needn’t search for very long to find them.
Experts likewise say that young people are increasingly making their way to TikTok when suffering from mental health problems, with Dutch TikTok users rising from 0.8 million in 2020 to over 4 million in 2023. Self-diagnosis is easily done. Kim van Gennip, head of the student psychologist department, has also heard that UvA students increasingly come in to see the student psychologist with their own diagnosis at the ready. “However, our student psychologists don’t diagnose; perhaps self-diagnoses are most of a topic of discussion within mental healthcare (GGZ).”
21-year-old UvA student Sophie Alsbach (Interdisciplinary Social Science) is someone who regularly watches these videos. With good reason: she suspects that she has ADHD, given that both her brother and father have been diagnosed with the condition and researchers believe that heredity plays a significant role in ADHD. “I recognise certain traits, such as ADHD paralysis”, she says. “It means that although people with ADHD want to do something productive, they have no energy to get started on it. I often get completely stuck when I’m studying.”
There are also a lot of memes online about ADHD symptoms, she says, which jokes about extreme procrastination and being in a dream state. It gives her a sense of recognition: she also tends to write her essays at the eleventh hour and her thesis felt like a race against the clock and she can’t concentrate during lectures. She feels a ‘real’ diagnosis is unnecessary. “I’ve graduated, so I don’t need the diagnosis to get extra time, for example. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to take any pills.”
Quality mark
Claudi Bockting, a Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at the Amsterdam UMC, who is also a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Centre for Urban Mental Health, kept a close eye on the increase in online content on mental health with her colleagues in recent years. She observed that young people indeed frequently diagnose themselves. She starts by stating that “the great thing about social media is that accounts can easily reach a lot of people and that you can find people who are going through the same thing as you are”.
However, Bockting questions where diagnosing yourself is a good idea. For example, there is the issue of whether the information provided by ‘mental health influencers’ is always accurate, she says. “There’s no quality mark for or regulation of these accounts. Anyone can easily claim that drinking a bottle of gin every day helps manage ADHD – which, I think, would be a bad idea.” On top of that, there is the privacy issue. “Social media might feel like a safe place – but it isn’t. You have no idea where your personal information and comments will end up. Do you really want your ‘self-diagnosis’ to end up with an American or Chinese tech company? You have no idea what happens to your data.”
Labels and stickers
All the posts about mental health has made people more likely to label themselves, says Professor Bockting. This may not be the case for Sophie – as inherited traits have given her a clear reason to start looking – but ultimately many people will be familiar with procrastination. “This doesn’t immediately mean that you have ADHD.” In that respect, mental health self-diagnoses are similar to looking up stomach pain on Google: only a GP who examines you can tell you whether your suspicions are corrected.
In addition, studies show that drawing attention to certain issues can be contagious, such as is the case for suicide. “If more people come into contact with suicide through social media, we know that a seed is planted in their heads that make the option more top of mind”, Bockting explains. ‘This lowers the threshold to ultimately doing it. This mechanism could similarly be at play in disorders such as ADHD or autism.’
Algorithms equally play a role with regard to contagion. “A depression bubble on TikTok will entail a certain weight and heaviness. Although it may initially be good to meet like-minded people, it shouldn’t drag you down – we call that a negative feedback mechanism. If you keep running into the same videos as a result of the algorithm, there is a danger of your ending up in a rabbit hole.”
Not lazy or messy
Anna van ‘t Wout (aged 22, Interdisciplinary Social Sciences) is someone who was not at risk of contagion, given that she was diagnosed with ADHD when she was nine years old, but never knew exactly what it meant or what to do with it. “I learned all kind of things from social media: I thought I was lazy and messy – my room was a mess, I handed in my profile coursework six months late – but now I know that my disorder makes it hard for me to concentrate and get motivated. I don’t use it as an excuse, but it has helped me a lot with my self-image.”
How do you know if you can trust a ‘mental health influencer’? A few questions you can ask yourself:
- Does this person provide evidence for the claims they are making?
- Is the information based on more than just the creator’s own experience?
- Does the information match that of other reliable, quality sources?
- Is the media creator being paid by external parties to convey this message?
Anna says she also learned more about the ‘niche characteristics’ of ADHD. “On TikTok, a lot of people with ADHD talk about the problems they have. One time there was a video about emotional dysregulation, which means that you can’t control your emotions properly. You’re more sensitive to that when you have ADHD. I then went on to read some scientific literature on the issue to make sure it wasn’t fake news.”
Anna also learned another important thing through TikTok: that her disorder is not purely negative. “When I was nine, ADHD was a problem I had to take medication for to reduce the symptoms. But spectrum disorders are a part of life and they also include some good aspects. For example, I’m super creative and can think out of the box – that’s part of ADHD, too.”
Are you having suicidal thoughts or you are concerned about someone? Talking about suicide helps and can take place anonymously using the chat feature on the 113.nl website or by phone on 113 or 0800 - 0113.
