CNN
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Others browse TikTok and Instagram for colorful interpretations of recipes, memes, and news. Erin Coleman said her 14-year-old daughter uses the apps to search for videos about mental health diagnoses.
Over time, according to her mother, the girl identified with the creators and became convinced that she had the same diagnosis: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, autism, germophobia (extreme fear of dirt and germs), and agoraphobia (fear of leaving the house).
“Every week she would come up with a different diagnosis,” Coleman told CNN. “When you find a hint of who you are in someone, you think you have it too.”
After being tested for mental health and medical conditions, her daughter was diagnosed with severe anxiety, not a condition on a long list she had assumed. “Even now she doesn’t think all the time.” [the specialists] You’re right,” Coleman said.
Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are also covered Enhanced monitoring These have been highlighted in recent years for their potential to direct young users to harmful content and exacerbate what experts call a national mental health crisis among teens. But Coleman is one of nearly 20 parents who told CNN that they are grappling with a separate but related issue of teens using social media to diagnose themselves with a mental health condition.
A trend that has alarmed parents, therapists and school counselors as more teens turn to social platforms like Instagram and TikTok for mental health guidance, resources, support and to find symptoms that may be right for them, according to an interview with CNN. Some teens even start following creators who discuss their mental health conditions, symptoms, and treatments. Some people have found symptom checklist posts to help determine if they meet diagnostic criteria.
As anyone who has used WebMD knows, using the Internet for self-diagnosis is nothing new. And there may be some advantages. Some parents said social media helped teens get the mental health information they needed and helped them feel less lonely.
However, many parents and experts have expressed concern that self-diagnosis and mislabeling can exacerbate teens’ behavior, leave them feeling isolated and counterproductive in obtaining the support they need. At worst, teens may end up on medication for a disease they don’t have. And when teens search for this mental health content, algorithms can keep showing similar videos and posts.
And like Coleman, some parents and therapists have found that once teens decide they’re sick, it can be difficult to persuade them otherwise.
Dr. Larry D. Mitnaul, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Wichita, Kansas, and founder and CEO of health coaching firm Be Well Academy, said he has seen an alarming number of teens self-diagnose from social media posts.
“Teens are already coming to our office with very strong opinions about self-diagnosing themselves,” he said. “When you talk hierarchically about how they came to that conclusion, it is often because of what they are looking and searching online, most certainly through social media.”
The most common self-diagnoses among teenagers are ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder, Mitnaul said. Teens used to visit his clinic to discuss their symptoms, he said, but he didn’t have a specific diagnosis or label in mind. He started noticing big changes in his 2021.
Patricia Mitnaur
Dr. Larry Mitnaul, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and founder of health coaching firm Be Well Academy, said he has seen an alarming number of teens self-diagnosing from social media posts.
“When I sit with teens, it’s a time of day when they’re experiencing a range of intense emotions in their lives that can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and affect their sense of identity,” he said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a rare mood disorder with pretty serious consequences, treatments and interventions.”
Developing an inaccurate sense of who you are through non-professional diagnosis can be detrimental. “When you go out and look for friend groups and ways to identify yourself, mislabeling often narrows the world for teens,” he says.
It can also put parents in an impossible position, and help isn’t always easy to find.
Julie Harper said her daughter was gregarious and friendly, but that all changed in 2020 when she was 16 during the COVID-19 lockdown. Harper said her daughter was diagnosed with depression, which she later improved with medication, but her moodiness increased after she began using TikTok for extended periods of time, and her new symptoms surfaced.
“My teenage daughter is obsessed with getting an autism diagnosis,” she said. However, Kentucky has a long waiting list and is unable to get a formal test. “Did TikTok help us figure something out, or did it drive us on a wild goose chase? I don’t know yet.”
Some experts suspect that teens may over-identify certain labels and diagnoses, even if they don’t fully accurately describe their struggles. This is because diagnoses can be used as shields and justifications for behavior in social situations.
“With the mounting pressure on young people to be socially competitive, teens with more anxiety may feel like they can’t compete,” says Alexandra Hamlett, a clinical psychologist who works with teens in New York City. “Teens may rely on their diagnosis to lower others’ expectations of their abilities,” she said.
Photo illustration: Jason Lancaster/CNN/Adobe Stock
Experts say social media users who post about mental illness are often seen as trustworthy by teens because they too suffer from the mental illness featured in the video or identify themselves as experts on the subject.
Hamlet said social media companies need to tweak their algorithms to better detect when users are consuming a lot of content on specific topics. Disclaimers and pop-up notifications can also encourage users to take a break and reflect on their spending habits, she said.
Liza Crenshaw, a spokeswoman for Instagram’s parent company Meta, said in a statement that the company “has no special guardrails, other than community standards, that would rightly prohibit anything that promotes, encourages or glorifies eating disorders, self-harm, and more.”
“But I think what you see a lot on Instagram is people coming together for community and support,” Crenshaw said.
Meta has created a number of programs, including the Well-being Creator Collective, to educate wellbeing and mental health creators on how to design positive content meant to inspire teens and support their well-being. Instagram has also introduced some tools to reduce compulsive scrolling, limit late-night browsing, and proactively direct teens who spend too long on one piece of content to another.
TikTok told CNN that it has taken steps to allow users to set regular viewing time breaks and added a safeguard to assign a “maturity score” to videos detected as potentially containing mature or complex themes. The platform also has parental control features that allow parents to filter videos containing words and hashtags to reduce the chances of seeing content they don’t want their teens to see.
Still, the online self-assessment trend, both online and offline, comes at a dangerous time for American teens.
In May, the US Surgeon General issued the following statement: Recommendation note The report said social media use poses a “risk of serious harm” to children, called for increased research on the impact of social media on the mental health of young people, and called for action by policy makers and technology companies.
Linden Tabor, a school counselor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, said students are still reeling from the effects of the global pandemic, and many therapists and psychiatrists have months-long waiting lists, not to mention some of these services are not economically available.
“I’ve seen an increase in psychological vocabulary among teenagers … I believe this is a step in the right direction as we have become less prejudiced as a society,” she told CNN. “But we haven’t increased access to support. This leaves us, especially teens, in isolation.”
She argues that when students self-diagnose based on information they see on the Internet, they often “feel like they’ve been sentenced…because they don’t always have a mental health professional to explain the complexities of the diagnosis, dispel myths and misconceptions, and give them hope.”
But for some, social media has had a positive impact on connecting people with mental health information and helping them feel less lonely.
Julie Fulcher, of Raleigh, N.C., said she began following ADHD influencers who could better explain behavior, impulsivity, and how the condition is related to executive functioning to help her daughter overcome her diagnosis.
Meanwhile, Upstate New Yorker Mary Spadaro Daikos has mixed feelings about her daughter’s use of social media for reasons related to her autism diagnosis. “She’s working on so many areas of self-discovery right now, and social media is a big part of that,” she said. “I know social media has a bad reputation, but in her case it can be hard to tell if the pros outweigh the cons.”
Many adults seem to think social media helps them identify lifelong mental health struggles. Amanda Klendenen, 35, a professional photographer from Austin, said she sought professional guidance after seeing a video about ADHD pop up on her TikTok “For You” page.
“Suddenly it all made sense” [with] I thought it was my own weird habit,” she told CNN. “But I took everything with a grain of salt, because I’m not a pro, and neither are most people on TikTok. But I didn’t want to deny it.”
She was then officially diagnosed with ADHD. In addition to therapy, she continues to use her TikTok as a resource and community. “It’s nice to find people going through the same thing.”
Laura Young, a 43-year-old mother who was also recently diagnosed with autism, agreed, noting that she found support systems on social media. “TikTok and Instagram are the only places where you can hear from real people with autism around the world and hear their unfiltered experiences firsthand,” Young said.
Be Well Academy’s Mitnaur said adults, in contrast to teens, can look at social media posts about mental health more objectively and can generate curiosity about things they’ve struggled with as a way to better care for themselves.
“Teens are more likely to accept that information and use it as a diagnosis before consulting professionals or adults who can help interpret what they see,” he said.
Coleman, whose daughter became obsessed with diagnosing herself online, said her teenage daughter’s symptoms improved in part because she followed social media restrictions, including Instagram and Instagram time limits. parent control. Coleman also downloaded an app to monitor her daughter’s account.
“She’s gotten a lot better, but she’s still very focused on finding out what the diagnosis is. She’s very interested in writing, and all her characters are diagnosed,” Coleman said. “This is a very vulnerable and sensitive age.”
