Teen Girls Are Developing Tics. Doctors Say TikTok Could Be a Factor
wsj.com
wsj.com
This has been going on for a long time now. Young people on TikTok pretend to have a wide variety of mental illness and neuro-atypicalities.
You can find kids pretending to have Aspergers. Pretending to have ADHD. It goes on. Tourette's is one in a long list.
Why? Because they think it's a quirk that makes them interesting and different. Very simply young people have massive egos and little awareness, which isn't anything new. This is a non story and giving it this attention only makes things worse.
What is new is unrestricted access to a world wide forum where they post videos and pictures of themselves without supervision (not just tiktok).
I think it's well worth the attention it is getting in the news and more importantly study of how it affects them.
Much like how a certain type of person will very strongly defend their musical preferences with various technical reasons, while discounting that it just happens to be what was popular when they were a teenager.
And regarding the music analogy: it's not about the person liking just the music from their formative years, it's that the music they're exposed to during those years has an outsized effect on their preferences going forward. If they pass an intuition check they'll eventually realize the _reason_ why they care so much about the specific technical details they do isn't because that music is inherently and objectively better, and if not then they'll spend the rest of their life complaining about how they just don't make 'em like that anymore.
Even as a kid I always found that a weird one.
Surely it doesn't take that long for people to notice that "who you are" changes with time?
Specially in modern times when you have contact with so many stories.
They see everyone else who behaves acting like clown but they’re less socially aware of which clown like behavior they should broadcast.
They conflate acting and mockery.
It's somewhat subconscious. You see someone do something that grabs your attention. You see this person getting attention as a positive.You want the same attention, so you mimic the traits that attract it. And the more people that do it, the more it grows an ingroup that you can feel safe belonging to. And actually these quirks aren't making them different, they're making them the same as other people who use the same quirks. Anyone who has ever seen a goth person and soon after began dressing goth themselves is doing the same thing.
That's called fashion.
It's really frustrating as it makes it that much harder for the people with the actual conditions or disorders, who already often have to face pervasive stigma and difficulty.
We have always played around with and manipulated these pathways in very casual ignorant ways to get whatever our 6 inch chimp brain needs.
But the difference today is the speed, scale and complete cluelessness with which the manipulation is happening.
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/munchausens-synd....
I can't imagine being so disconnected from how humans work as to not understand what's up here.
People enjoy the attention of other people- it's part of the drive to gain social position. Sometimes they develop pathological behaviour related to this drive. Particularly when self-awareness is low like in most teenagers and some non-neurotypical people.
> In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters sounds the alarm about falling psychiatric biodiversity. Along with all the usual effects of globalization, everyone is starting to have the same mental illnesses, and to understand them in the same way.
I’m not sure your certainty on your explanation is justified, this is complex and there are multiple factors interacting. Maybe some kids are pretending, maybe some kids are not. Just because an uptick of specific conditions is occurring, it does not mean that the uptick is people pretending.
Take a look at QAnon. I remember when I first heard about that thinking "Heh, those 4chan trolls are at it again". I got slowly more horrified as wider and wider swaths of people, including people in positions of government power, started believing this completely absurd nonsense.
More on topic for the article, as a gay person, I think it's great that young people today can explore their sexuality in a way that isn't terrifying if you land on something other than "straight". That said, I admit I do feel a bit of resentment when some younger people today want to change their sexuality on a monthly basis, or express outrage when you don't call them by new pronouns that they made up (not talking about he/she/they, I'm talking about stuff like 'xe'). It just feels like blatant attention seeking that cheapens the struggles of people who are actually not straight.
Because I do not believe it for a single second. This s 4chan/Kiwifarms style harassment rationalisation, not something that is actually happening.
https://old.reddit.com/r/fakedisordercringe/comments/lz83c2/...
> young people have massive egos and little awareness, which isn't anything new
There is a new element tho, and that's adults being the middleman and exploiters and shapers of said needs via electronic means at mass scale, who exploit and capitalize on the weaknesses of young and old alike, and don't give the slightest fuck about they harm.
But true trans-f trans-m truly are or feel they were born the total opposite gender, some may even have been born w/ hermaphrodite expression possibly, where they had some of the opposite parts which could cause hormones of that kind...
Regardless, it's not a mental health issue imho, for some it may be a decision for the non-binary types..that one confuses me some, and I'm ASD spectrum so blunt, so I hope I don't offend anyone, just trying to use reasoning to understand/talk it through...
My cousin who's like 20 years younger than me is transitioning to male via hormones, etc. It seemed odd to me, but she didn't have a very happy upbringing either, raised by grandparents and her mom/dad I think not really wanting a kid (or treating her like she was their 'child'. She was dating a girl in H.S. then a boy, who she's still with even through becoming trans, I really haven't seen her in years though, just from facebook, etc.
Honestly, I admire people who find out who they are and go for it. I'm 42, and still floundering trying to find my purpose in life, or who I am. I'm a dad, and a programmer, and a husband... but what else? I feel incomplete often myself, but that's partly trying to learn to deal w/ ASD/ADHD which I only found out I had 3 years ago, and is part to blame for my obesity, depression, anxiety, and bouts of complete lack of motivation or severe procrastination.
tldr: I highly doubt gender-id is related to tik-tok or 'contagious', except maybe non-binary only because that's a little fluid, and just logically in my head it's non-committal one way or the other, though that's probably just my lack of understanding what it really means to be non-binary... Personally, I can't fathom waking up and being like: Ooh all these men want to be girls, that sounds like fun, I should too... it just doesn't sound like something that'd be prone to peer pressure. It's definitely a very personal choice, and has reasons behind it.
Who you are becomes infinitely more interesting than the quality of your character or your actions.
Pretending to be disabled or atypical neurological is one. Explosions, as high as 1500% increase in Sweden, of Tran identity is another. I'd argue building tribes of reactionaries trying to out-victim everyone else, like incels, are also a part of this. You see dominant religious groups take pages out of minority playbooks and do it back, faking injury like a pro soccer player.
This swj/capitalist duality we have is utterly toxic.the reaction to it is toxic too.
We are not our race, gender, who we sleep with or our diagnosis. And I say that as someone with multiple autoimmune and psych disorders. It's not cool. It doesn't make me unique or cool or funny or more valid. I felt more valid when I didn't have these things I try not to look at as labels of "am" and more of "experiencing". I don't like to admit it. I don't even let my employers know even though it'd afford me greater flexibility and leeway.
You're gonna see an increase of trans-racial, self-hating majorities, reactionary majorities, minorities who add to the already more difficult life-mod they're handed with self-defeatist b.s.
And it's all bc we be been hammered to think identities make us more equal than others and gives us power over others. That it makes us special. Unique.
Were all finding power in victimhood now. Even conservatives
Regarding "incels", they are mostly correct as far as I can tell, and seem to be some of the only people who have genuine empathy for Asians. I often see vile stuff written about Asian and Indian men online, especially by horrible white women who are a "protected group" that cannot be criticized. How do we fight against this stuff that so-called progressives perpetuate without having to identify with our groups?
Cute pictures of animals helps.
Someone got a reaction from that joke, so you posted that joke to recreate it
Not damaging in any way like faking an illness, but same process
Or maybe there are billions of people on the internet now and seeking out only the most infuriating 0.01% still leaves hundreds of thousands I could be mad at. And instead I can close the browser and read a book.
At the same time, you live in a society that encourages getting “likes” and attention from thousands of people online. But frankly, you’re a boring person.
So how do you differentiate yourself? You pretend to have quirky tics! Or OCD. That’s quirky too. Or ADHD - plenty of people ready to give you sympathy (and views) for that one. You stay away from schizophrenia though, that’s too dark and will lower engagement.
I have used the exact same language... "not malicious"... but it's still term overloading that hurts people with OCD and keeps them living in what is legitimately hell on earth
True OCD can be debilitating, yet I hear so many use it as a synonym for being particular or fussy.
,,The ordeal has been hard on the family, who say it has been lonely and frustrating. Kayla said she still watches ADHD videos on TikTok but has stopped watching tic videos.’’
Does watching ADHD videos on TikTok really help managing life with ADHD? I can imagine that people can learn some things from it, but the speed of TikTok itself can be damaging for people who can’t concentrate.
...what? Long form videos, sure. Videos of published peer reviewed papers? If anything, the pandemic has demonstrated to us that most people don't watch videos of good peer-reviewed papers.
Are we talking about the same youtube? Sure, most videos are 10/15 minutes long, because the algorithm favors them, but it's 15 minutes of video for 3 minutes of content at most. And videos about published, peer reviewed papers? These things are very rare. That's not even considering the fact that these published, peer reviewed papers may be about unreproducible experiments or stuff like that.
I went to the medic, which referred me to a psychiatrist, which told me not to worry about that.
A year and a half later it went away. Rarely, when I am exceptionally tired it will show up.
I don’t think it was a big secret even before their research.
The kind of complaints Ancient Rome had is the same as we had 50 years ago, which boiled down to adults wondering why youngsters didn't act like them. In due time youngsters age, become adults themselves and the cycle repeats.
There is no shortage of adults addicted to social media. We can see the effects of it in many of us and I think it's fair to worry for the consequences it may have in developmental stages.
For one, the idea new generations have about "privacy" is something I'm seriously worried about. When I was 15 I was aware that only a moron would go around the internet giving personal data. That is now expected behavior.
That's one way to see it, another way is that it's a form of adaptation. Now that everything goes very fast, you need people that can jump around things very fast to stay on top of these kind of things. I know that I personally couldn't be a social media manager, or invest in crypto/NTFs/the latest trend, because that stuff goes way too fast for me. But on the other hand, I seem to be better at going deeper into stuff for long period of time than these people. There's a chance that it's still a net negative, for sure, but I don't think we should dismiss that as "people worse than before".
> For one, the idea new generations have about "privacy" is something I'm seriously worried about. When I was 15 I was aware that only a moron would go around the internet giving personal data. That is now expected behavior.
I think that may be because you can be a bit more "yourself" than before. For example, it's easier to be publically gay right now than 15 years before. It's easier to publically be into niche hobbies. I think that's because people are more exposed to them, and it's something feeding on itself. I don't know if it's positive or negative, I think it's relatively neutral.
On your second point, I think people care less about other people. That explains how you can be tolerable, no matter what they actually think of your conduct. They don't care.
Use a script to explain a problem to them, compare questions.
Tell them to write down their own description of the problem, compare answers.
No?
Should we not start now, if this is a question worth discussing – it's worth exploring.
They wouldn't be interesting people. So they wouldn't meet someone. So they won't have children.
They vote. Whichever way the last 6 weeks of TwitTok told them to.
I'm sorry, I seem to have something in the oven, brb
From 1.5mo ago