According to psychiatrists and pediatricians, there is an “urgent need” to explore the growing number of children and teenagers self-diagnosing with neurological problems, mental illnesses, and personality disorders, a trend fuelled by social media and difficulty accessing healthcare.
A paper published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry in January describes how prolonged social media use, particularly on video-sharing platforms such as TikTok, exposes young people to an increasing number of content creators making videos about their self-described tics, Tourette syndrome, and other self-diagnosed disorders. Tourette syndrome is a complex illness characterized by tics, which are recurrent, abrupt, and involuntary motions or noises. According to the report, the modern functional tic-like behaviors that young individuals present to their doctors differ from classic Tourette syndrome.
