ADHD TikTok: Helpful or Harmful? | Neurodivergent Magic

Personally, I believe ADHD TikTok has done a lot more to help the ADHD community than to hurt it, and I think this study was both poorly executed and poorly interpreted. We know TikTok has a misinformation problem, and I'm not saying every video is perfect, but I have to wonder how many videos were labeled as "misleading" because they contained the lived experiences of Black, queer, or multiply disabled folks whose experiences of ADHD doesn't match the literature which was compiled based on research on young, white, boys.

Feel free to comment your own opinions, but these are mine.

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[roxainaboxa]

From a research standpoint, as I understand it, 100 is the minimum sample size to get a meaningful result. But I totally agree that selecting the 100 most viewed videos wasn't the right choice. Seems they should have been randomly selected from videos with ADHD hashtags instead. Also, it's ONE study, so any sweeping generalizations based on it are going to be pretty shallow.

I think ADHD TikTok and TikTok in general are more helpful than harmful. We're finding our people, our community, and learning a lot. We shouldn't rely exclusively on TikTok (or any social media platform), but that comes down to internet and social media literacy.

[Eryniell]

my answer is "necessary" we need to talk more about those things, because there are still alot of people missinformed and missdiagnosed and too often that leads to trauma aswell....

[SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

The main issue I've seen on the more popular tiktoks, those that have lots of stitches with rebuttals etc. is not that it's full of outright nonsense but largely that they attribute autism symptoms to ADHD. And I think the main reason for this is that very many people with both ADHD and Autism are only diagnosed with one of them usually ADHD. So obviously they are going to attribute all their divergent traits to the one diagnosis they know they have. (Still not a very good excuse for those who knew they had both but still only used the ADHD tag; that might just be because of more ableism towards autism)

And about 20 years ago when i was diagnosed with only ADHD (and I'm now sure I have both) there was a very "good" reason for professionals to deliberately only explore ADHD: back then (and in many peoples mind still because updating mental software is slow) the criteria for ADHD and Autism was mutually exclusive; according to the old DSM you could not have ADHD and Autism and since many ADHD symptoms has a pretty effective medical treatment with stimulants and theres no medicine that helps autism; the professionals very reasonably decided they were better off with an ADHD diagnosis than Autism.

Also ADHD + Autism does actually mask eachother to an extent; so the autism traits will be much less obvious for others with untreated ADHD. Obviously nobody's going to notice that we have an issue with eyecontact if our ADHD makes us unable to stay still; and our sensory sensitivity issues might not even be obvious to ourself when our ADHD stimulus seeking overrides our instinct to avoid noise and bright lights.

Also our ADHD impulsivity will make us seem less "rigid" and less preferring routines and our underlying drive for rule following and routines might also mask our ADHD by making us able to work around our disorganisation by making Mandatory Rules we must follow:
E.g. I made up an Mandatory Rule (that I still actually follow) as a teen after too many embarrassing episodes of forgetting either my gym bag or my backpack to school, that I shall never leave the house without my backpack and anything I will need the next day shall be in or physically attached to the backpack; that way I feel naked if I ever leave the house without it (and after all I now always need my Ritalin, drinking water, my foldable cane for when my hyper mobile joints act up, my wallet, my custom molded earplugs, noise cancelling headpones, usually some kind of entertainment or my work computer etc. at all times anyway so leaving without a backpack would be weird), so I never do. I also have a rule of never leaving with my backpack without locking the door. (I also used to have a rule about phone in left pocket, wallet and keys in the right pocket; but that I've changed to have it all in my backpack since my keychain has grown uncomfortably large and it's more comfortable to have empty pockets or only the few things I'm about to use in my pockets.)

[jordonlongley]

You deserve tons of subscribers. You are very clear and concise. You explain the nuances well.

[LindySouthern]

Oh my gosh, yes! I think this is also true for ASD. I’m multiply physically disabled (vision loss, hearing loss, and mobility issues) and i can’t tell: what’s my physical disabilities, or what’s a possible neurodivergence? It’s confusing 😢😢

[shalandriaelliott]

It’s definitely helpful. I now have talking points for things I couldn’t articulate before when I talk to my doctor.

[Warspite]

TikTok is harmful no matter the topic, and it has nothing to do with the content that is being posted. Biggest concerns are with its algorithm and information sharing back to the ccp. 😅

[GoADHDGo]

“Stay far far away.” - my coder hacker friend when I asked him about if I should use TikTok.

Apparently, TikTok’s privacy policy is that all your data is TikTok’s data. Yikes.

[freegreenpeas]

It's a mixture of helpful and harmful. I'm sure it's validating for a lot of people, but you're making an assumption that people read comments and see that they're seeing something that's misinformation. Sometimes people only take notice of the information that fits their narrative.

In the UK people are being told to self refer if their Dr suggests it could be something else, but I think people should be listening to their Dr and open to the fact that ADHD symptoms present in a lot of mental illnesses, some of which are way more common than ADHD.

I have diagnosed ADHD. My local service has had an influx of self referrals recently and I can't get a med review because they're so busy and don't prioritise people based on need. ADHD doesn't affect everyone in the same way. Mine is severe and my treatment has stopped because of this recent trend. I'm a uni student and I had to take a med break, now I need them back and I've been waiting over six months and am close to failing unless I get help soon.

[soniacz]

THIS!!! We really know how to use internet, we know how to look for a specific topic, it’s as natural for us as for older generation are books. Ive always felt like i don’t fit in this world, that I can’t handle it the way all people seem to easily do, this lead to s*icidal thoughts… tiktok showed me all this variety of ND experiences, i’ve looked it up and… now I know that im not broken, I have cptsd and probably autistic. Starting to finally like myself, first time in my whole life. Thank you tiktok. You made me do this 💪🏻