TikTok’s ADHD videos can be massively misleading

A new study has highlighted the perils of diagnosing illnesses via social media.

Around one in every 100 people is affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to international figures. However, the rise of new self-diagnoses has been driven in part by increased awareness of what is purportedly the mental health illness’s key features through social media platforms like TikTok.

Awareness of the illness has shot up, with Google searches soaring because of this increased awareness. That 1% diagnosis level likely undercounts the true prevalence, given the number of people visiting doctors to explore whether they have it or not. A large part of this momentum is being driven by TikTok videos.

Except those videos are chock-full of misinformation, according to a new study that suggests people may be receiving bad information about ADHD from viral videos.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia analyzed the most-viewed videos tagged with #ADHD on a given day in January 2023, looking at the number of views, engagements, and shares that the 100 most popular posts received. The average video had nearly one million likes and combined nearly 500 million views.

Making claims, but not backing them up

In the 100 most-viewed ADHD videos on TikTok, the user was shown an average of three claims about ADHD symptoms or causes in each video. Those claims were checked by psychologists trained in ADHD, who assessed whether the claims being made – from how symptoms manifested themselves to the traits people might have if they had ADHD – were accurate.

The accuracy of the claims was checked by comparing them to claims in the DSM-5, a popular textbook used to diagnose mental disorders. However, less than half of the suggestions creators said were signs of ADHD were actually contained within the textbook – the remainder being traits that are either not officially linked to ADHD or which could be considered average human behavior.

Of those 100 videos, the psychologists then rated the most and least accurate videos, showing the five most clinically accurate and five most outlandish (or least credible) to several hundred students at the university. Both the psychologists and the students were then asked to rate the five most truthful videos and the five least on a scale of 0 to 5, which asked whether they were likely to recommend watching it to others or not.

Fake news thrives

The psychologists said the most accurate videos scored an average of 3.6/5, while the least accurate scored 1.1/5. The students scored things differently: the more accurate videos were a 2.8/5, while the least accurate were a 2.3/5.

This shows two key things: one, the students were unable to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate claims as well as the experts, and they generally thought the claims were roughly equal in their weighting. That could have knock-on effects on people’s beliefs in their own ADHD prevalence, which could cause self-misdiagnosis of the illness.

The researchers also looked at the time people spent on TikTok, and the resultant likelihood they would recommend videos. The longer people spent watching videos – even if they weren’t clinically accurate, the more likely they would recommend even bad videos to their peers.

A TikTok spokesperson said: "As people express themselves authentically and build supportive communities on TikTok, we proactively provide the TikTok community with access to reliable mental health information from the Cleveland Clinic, National Institute of Mental Health, and World Health Organization."