The popular videos of Tiktok on the ADHD usually do not faithfully reflect the symptoms, according to experts

Tiktok’s popular videos about him Hyperactivity attention deficit disorder (ADHD) They are seen differently by expert medical Compared to young adultsAccording to a new study that highlights the role played by social networks in the configuration of our perception of health.

The researchers asked two psychologists Clinicals specialized in ADHD This will examine 100 popular Tiktok videos on this disorder, which affects the behavior of people e it is characterized by the difficulty of concentrating and hyperactivity or impulsiveness.

The two psychologists discovered him less than half (48.7%) of video statements They exactly reflected the symptoms of the ADHD According to a diagnostic manual. Subsequently, the researchers have made more than 800 university students see 10 of the videos of TiktokThose who experts have described as less and less reliable.

The study, published on Wednesday at magazine “Plos One,” revealed a discrepancy in the way experts and students have perceived videos. In the case of the five videos Better evaluated by psychologists, young people gave them a relatively less than 2.8 score, compared to the average of 3.6 out of 5 of the experts.

The young people described the less reliable videos with a 2.3 out of 5, well above 1.1 out of 5 that experts gave them. “In general, this work has some important implications And it offers a balanced vision of the impact of social networks, “says Blandine French, researcher of the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom) who did not participate in the study.

“But also Raises concern for spectators who trust these contents as educational and support sources. The lack of nuances, empirical bases and reliability of these videos is very high. “This does not mean they are always bad, but you have to take them with extreme caution,” he added.

Popular videos, few creators with credentials

The authors of the study discovered him The most viewed #ADHD videos They were very popular, with almost 500 million visits. Most videos did not refer to a source and only one in five content creators shared their credentials in the video. Just over a third he indicated them in his Perfil de Tiktok. 83.6% of those indicated by their credentials They referred to their personal experience, while 13.1% said they were consultants for life.

Only 1.6% are said to be therapist Or director without providing information on license and 1.6% said they were an authorized mental health operator. According to the researchers, none of the users declared a doctor, psychiatrist or doctor. About half of the creators Have promoted products or he sought a sort of financial compensation.

Research is a “starting point

People who had a Auto -Diagnosis or official diagnosis of ADHD They tended to see more videos and those who had an autonomous diagnosis saw the worst videos appreciated by psychologists in a more favorable way than those who had a clinical diagnosis. According to French, it is a Fact “interesting, but potentially worrying”.

“The diagnosticated group seemed more capable of differentiating the quality of the information, while the autonomous diagnosis was not so much,” he said. Among the limits of the study there is the fact that University students were on psychology And they were mainly women, therefore external experts warn the danger of generalizing the results. The authors of the study say that the research “provides a starting point to understand the Adhd representations En Tiktok.

“Tiktok can be an incredible tool To increase awareness and reduce stigma, but also has an inconvenience, “said a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada and the main author of the study in a note Vasileia Karasavva. “Anecdotes and personal experiences are powerfulBut when they lack context they can lead to misunderstandings about ADHD and mental health in general. “