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One of the worst parts about TikTok is that some content creators have been making these really ill-informed “5 weird symptoms of [mental illness]” videos in which they just list a bunch of potentially atypical but certainly not diagnostic behaviors - which then... (1/n)
...leads to other users convincing themselves that because they, for example, get songs stuck in their head, they must have ADHD. (That’s an ACTUAL thing that was in one of these videos. Like....what??) The videos themselves are usually pretty popular, garnering 10k+ views. (2/n)
In addition to being straight-up incorrect and ridiculous, I’d argue that it ladders up to this weird trend of overpathologizing personality - if there are things you do that you don’t like about yourself, you can find a TikTok video that’ll tell you it’s just an aspect... (3/n)
...of a diagnosable (or not - see the videos at the end of this thread) mental illness which means you’re less responsible for changing it. Again - all for relatively common behaviors.
If you teach an intro class (or really any psych class, but especially if you’re the... (4/n)
If you teach an intro class (or really any psych class, but especially if you’re the... (4/n)
...first/only contact your students have with the field), PLEASE take some time to talk about how absurd these videos are. We don’t need “life coaches” convincing students that they have “high functioning anxiety” because they *checks notes* think when they make decisions. (5/n)
I *will* say that some psych faculty are addressing this bullshit on TikTok itself (awesome!) but that only goes so far. (6/6)
