On TikTok, misinformation about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be tricky to spot, according to a new study.
The study, published on Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, found that fewer than 50 percent of the claims made in some of the most popular A.D.H.D. videos on TikTok offered information that matched diagnostic criteria or professional treatment recommendations for the disorder. And, the researchers found, even study participants who had already been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. had trouble discerning which information was most reliable.
About half of the TikTok creators included in the study were using the platform to sell products, such as fidget spinners, or services like coaching. None of them were licensed mental health professionals.
The lack of nuance is concerning, said Vasileia Karasavva, a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the lead author of the study. If TikTok creators talk about difficulty concentrating, she added, they don’t typically mention that the symptom is not specific to A.D.H.D. or that it could also be a manifestation of a different mental disorder, like depression or anxiety.
“The last thing we want to do is discourage people from expressing how they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing and finding community online,” Ms. Karasavva said. “At the same time, it might be that you self-diagnose with something that doesn’t apply to you, and then you don’t get the help that you actually need.”
Ms. Karasavva’s results echo those of a 2022 study that also analyzed 100 popular TikTok videos about A.D.H.D. and found that half of them were misleading.
“The data are alarming,” said Stephen P. Hinshaw, a professor of psychology and an expert in A.D.H.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in either study. The themes of the videos might easily resonate with viewers, he added, but “accurate diagnosis takes access, time and money.”
In Ms. Karasavva’s study, the researchers began by selecting the 100 most viewed videos on a single day in January of 2023 and asked two licensed clinical psychologists to review each video. The psychologists were called to assess whether the videos accurately captured the symptoms of adult or adolescent A.D.H.D. that are characterized in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is used by medical professionals in the United States to diagnose and classify mental health conditions.
If a video’s claim didn’t match up with the manual, the psychologists then established whether the symptoms in the video better reflected a different type of disorder or something that anyone, including those without A.D.H.D., might experience. Finally, they rated on a scale of 1 to 5 whether they would recommend the video to help educate other people about A.D.H.D.
One limitation of the study was that it did not rely on a large panel of experts to evaluate the videos.
The researchers then asked more than 840 undergraduate students to rate the videos using the same scale used by the psychologists. The study participants who were the most frequent consumers of A.D.H.D.-related TikTok content were more likely than the other participants to recommend the top five most reputable videos. But they were also more likely to recommend the bottom five videos. And that was true regardless of whether they had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. or not.
Ms. Karasavva said this could be because the TikTok algorithm serves videos that are similar to those a person has already watched — and as we come across the same information again and again, it’s tempting to think that “all these people can’t be wrong.”
“In the end, you might come to believe things that don’t really match up with the science,” she said.
Notably, the students in the study also vastly overestimated how many people actually had A.D.H.D.
The information on TikTok “doesn’t always tell you the full story, and it can also lead the loudest voices to be overrepresented,” said Margaret Sibley, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle who was not involved in the study. “People might not be discerning about what aspect of their experience is A.D.H.D. versus something else.”
