Is TikTok making people twitch and tic? Short answer: No, TikTok is not causing Tourette syndrome in today’s adolescents, but the platform is not entirely innocent either.
COVID-19 restrictions led to an increase in most people’s time spent on their personal devices. And for some, the pandemic lockdowns also brought about a surge in teenagers self-diagnosing themselves with Tourette syndrome which was attributed to the content they consumed on social media.
Created in September 2016, TikTok became the most downloaded app at the beginning of 2022. It then fell to second place by the end of the year according to Sensor Tower, an organization that tracks what apps get downloaded globally.
While TikTok is known to accelerate its users’ ability to spread awareness and destigmatize mental health topics, for some youth TikTok also encourages self-diagnosing habits where teenagers incorrectly identify with conditions like Tourette syndrome reflecting a digitally-enforced sociogenic illness.
What is a sociogenic illness?
Sociogenic illness happens when a group of people experience symptoms, whether physical or psychiatric, that are identical to one another and are believed to have come from the same source. Yet, according to a 2022 publication by Harvard Medical School, these symptoms cannot be explained medically.
Historically, a sociogenic illness was seen in physical environments, like schools and workplaces, where individuals that shared a social common-place would faint sporadically or experience headaches, a shortness of breath and unintentional vocal movements. Yet, these physical demonstrations of illness had no apparent medical explanation.
What is Tourette syndrome?
Clinical psychologist Jen Ference-Belhomme worked in the Tourettes and Pediatric Movement Disorder Clinic for about five years before the centre recently relocated to the South Health Campus from the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Remaining in close contact with the clinic’s neurologists, Ference-Belhomme has seen an increased number of people seeking therapeutic attention with claims of having Tourette syndrome or tic disorder since the conclusion of pandemic restrictions.
The definition of Tourette syndrome is when someone involuntarily displays a “tic,” which Ference-Belhomme describes as a sudden, often fast-paced and recurring sound or movement. Tourette syndrome is not a condition that is learned. Rather, it is believed to be genetic.
Tics range from being what Ference-Belhomme sees as a simple movement, like eye blinking or shoulder shrugging, to something more complex, like when people string together certain words or phrases in a repeated sequence.
“Some kids describe it as a burning sensation or like a buildup of energy,” said Ference-Belhomme. “Then when they tic, it releases that [energy] for a period.”
Ference-Belhomme stresses that Tourette syndrome and tic disorder are two separate conditions. People with Tourette’s will always have tics, yet not everyone with tics has Tourette syndrome.
Tic disorder is apparent when someone presents only motor or only verbal tics, often occurring for less than a year. Whereas, in Ference-Belhomme view, Tourette syndrome is present when someone shows evidence of both motor or verbal tics adjacent to one another for at least a year.
Behavioural intervention, a method of treating Tourette syndrome, aims to help people with the condition recognize the urge to tic but, instead of succumbing to this urge, encourage them to do something counterintuitive to the tic itself.
“The best thing to do is to get your mind off of it,” said Ference-Belhomme. “Not tic and still get relief.”
How is self-diagnosing behaviour influencing TikTok tics?
While encouraging the importance of social distancing, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions increased the public’s use of social media applications throughout much of 2020 and 2021.
Psychiatric professionals concluded that the tics these young people were showing were not an attribute of Tourette syndrome. Instead, it was a result of them reenacting the TikTok videos they watched of people with mental or movement disorder sharing their day-to-day activities.
“We know with Tourette syndrome and tic disorders that tics are heavily and predictably influenced by surroundings,” said Ference-Belhomme. “That could be internal environmental cues or it could be external environmental cues.”
“It’s human nature to be curious about ourselves. Where it becomes problematic is where you’re trying to identify things that may or may not actually exist.”
Brent Macdonald
Founder of Onward Psychology Group and registered psychologist Brent Macdonald sees how today’s digitally reliant society has provided young people with information that only psychologists or psychiatrists had access to in the age of analogue.
Macdonald cites the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a step-by-step guide psychologists use throughout the diagnostic process. The manual ensures that the proper criteria are met which then assists mental health professionals to accurately classify whether or not individuals have a disorder.
“There’s lots of factors that could be at play,” said Macdonald. “They’re significant, and if you miss them because you’re not a physician, you put yourself in danger.”
While digital media allows for an increased public understanding of complicated psychological topics, it also poses fertile ground for self-diagnosing behaviour.
Macdonald defines self-diagnosing as when an individual without proper psychiatric experience or decoration claims to have an illness or disorder. He takes the position that the action of self-diagnosing proposes an “almost 50-50 split” between being harmful and being productive.
“It’s human nature to be curious about ourselves,” said Macdonald. “Where it becomes problematic is where you’re trying to identify things that may or may not actually exist.”
How is TikTok ‘causing’ Tourette syndrome?
Acknowledging Facebook as a platform which lends itself to older generations, and X, formerly Twitter, existing as what he would argue is a “political wasteland,” Macdonald credits TikTok’s popularity among modern youth to the application method of easily communicating content using primarily video and photographic mediums.
Providing people with a platform to educate mass audiences about Tourette syndrome makes others feel validated when they watch someone else going through relatable experiences.
Where the fine line exists between feeling informationally enlightened and self-diagnosing, says Macdonald, is when young people claim to have a mental disorder that they would not have identified with before watching a TikTok video.
“Where it’s harmful is when people start to identify and make part of their identity that this is who they are without a proper diagnosis,” said Macdonald. “Because that diminishes the experiences of the people who actually have the diagnosis.”
