The Twitching Girls: Is this the first illness spread by social media? | Hacker News Reader

The Twitching Girls: Is this the first illness spread by social media?

theatlantic.com

ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) is arguably an illness spread by social media. There is a paper "Peer Group and Social Media Influences in Adolescent and Young-Adult Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria" by Lisa Littman https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567(18)30664-6/fulltex... .

It's debunked.

"ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) has never been recognized by any major professional association as a valid mental health diagnosis, and its use has been discouraged by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and other medical organizations due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence for the concept."

"In 2021, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association cosigned a statement with 120 other medical organizations calling for ROGD not to be used in diagnostic or clinical settings due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence for the concept. The statement also criticized the proliferation of misinformation supporting the concept of ROGD targeted at parents and clinicians and the concept's use to justify laws targeting the rights of transgender youth in the United States."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...

>It's debunked

Such a bold claim for something that is very new, and isn't simple to test for. It's complex psychological/sociological chains of events that we are struggling to explain. Your quotes say: at best "we don't want to say because this term has existed for maybe a year and we have no data", at worst "the experts say no because it sounds transphobic".

Read the Wikipedia entry. Read the portion about the original study that coined the term ROGD. It's a laughable 'study'. There are any number of 'studies' at any point of time without any actual rigor.

Edit: Also 'very new' is 2018.

But we already know what ROGD is. Psychologists don't officially recognize it because the term originates not from science, but from hate based fear mongering. Psychologists most likely will never officially recognize it because there is a very simple explanation. Parents spend their whole lives trying to hide the existence of things like "trans". If it's ever mentioned, it's harshly demonized. LGBT people want the right to exist. This contradicts the parent's goal of sheltering their children from reality.

It's like an awesome meme, or an invention like the wheel or beer. Once it gets out, you can't stop it's spread. The cat's out of the bag.

These are children growing up with feelings they know they can never talk about with anyone out of fear of violence or excommunication. In all accessible media to them, the way they feel essentially does not exist, or is only represented by a mockery of their feelings, if not out right violence.

ROGD might eventually exist, but 99.99% of what you actually hear about is parents angry that LGBT people are allowed to exist.

This is actually a very fundamental question of nature or nurture. You, and the movement of LGBT people, believe that it is nurture, and innate. Perhaps wrong brain in the wrong body, perhaps hormones, perhaps chemicals. However my position is that it's a mixture of the two, which doesn't make anyone's feelings less valid, but just means we should think twice before pumping children full of hormones (or blockers) and make sure it is something that cannot be treated with social/psychological care. If there is an element of social contagion (remember how cool anorexia used to be? Emo adjacent things?) then we have a disaster on our hands, so we should exercise precaution first.

> we should think twice before pumping children full of hormones

Have you ever talked to a trans individual? You literally can't do anything without every professional in the field asking you to do a little more than "think twice".

That's good, however it still happens. Personally seen many of cases of children on puberty blockers, who knows how many there are. Regardless, it is becoming the norm to let children do as they please unless you would like to be labeled as an abusive parent. Here's the thing, getting medication for a psychological disorder should be very difficult, there's a reason countries don't just hand out Ritalin to every kid.

> But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls.

(◔_◔)

It would've been more interesting if it was actually skewed in favor of a gender, but the framing of this (as opposed to "affected people equally regardless of gender" or something similar) puts a suggestion of this primarily affecting girls when it seems to be gender neutral.

I believe it is meant to contrast with the first paragraph of the article, which does indeed state that typically this behavior is seen in boys. So half of the patients being female is noteworthy.

> > But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls.

> (◔_◔)

Me, who comprehended the connection to the previous paragraph that clearly puts the quote in contradistinction to Tourrette's affecting mostly boys:

(◔_◔)

In fairness, the difference would've been more pronounced to me if they'd actually given the numbers. "Typical" doesn't give me enough context, but 3-4x does:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2008/04/9325.html

Thanks for steering me.

I think "these new patients" refers to patients who came to the clinic after a certain point in time, not with a certain quality. Google tells me that about 3/4 of children with (real) Tourette's are boys - so a sudden change to 1/2 indicates that this is a problem primarily affecting girls. In any case, the writing should have been clearer.

More than a decade ago South Park had the same exact topic covered where Cartman suddenly "develops tics" and the doctors are confused why he got it when he was much older.

Cartman is just mimicking other people with tourettes for attention

I think young teenagers feel like they need something to be "special" and fit in, nowadays what is fashionable is a disability, a different gender, live hair color...

They see someone with "something" getting attention, so they will imitate, because they want to be someone

It is like before people felt they needed to belong to a group, goths, populars, punks, hipsters, sport, emos, nerds... Which still exists but that is now to "normative", they want to belong but be different, so they offshoot to the Gothic with pink hair

Which was always a big blunder made by most teenagers minding to much with appearances, wanting to fit in and fearing being called losers. Focusing too much on the external and ignoring what really matters, their aspirations of what they want from life

It seems that now a days we focus on physical differences more than ever, even though we keep fighting for equality. Maybe we forgot to tell that to teenagers. Or maybe it is the hard focus on how can we integrate the ones that are different, minorities, disabilities... Leaving out how to integrate the rest

When I was in school is was wearing all black, having a chain wallet and wearing boots. Now its faking disorders.

> Now its faking disorders.

When you put it that way, it sounds like Munchausen Syndrome. Maybe it sort of is. But with a stronger memetic component.

It's clearly not an illness, it's just misguided, confused mimicry. The internet is not a hospitable place for children. Caveat emptor.

This reminds me of something I read a few years ago (possibly on HN) about a “disease” that was socially transmissible (possibly psychosomatic).

It might have been “swooning”[1], but I can't remember for sure.

Anyone else remember something like this?

[1] https://kellygoshorn.com/archives/2018/04/swooning-a-victori...

>Is this the first illness spread by social media

No, it is not, and it won't be the last either, if you have any sense, keep your daughters off social media or at least limit it. I assume sons are safer in this regard but more vulnerable in other forms of internet access.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E67Ix2mobJg

I'm 36 and have manifested Tourette's Syndrome since I was about six. My entire family has it and was part of a study at the University of Utah because of the unique circumstances of our family being particularly large and a particularly common manifestation of Tourette's throughout the family.

Anyway, I'm interested in the commentary in the link above that those with Tourette's are "free," particularly with their ability to say things that are inappropriate. I have pretty extreme facial tics (maybe one every few minutes) and head shaking coupled with verbal "oh shit!" that I've been able to kind of disguise as a cough.

I personally definitely say very shocking things very often. People say I'm, "abrasive" or "tactless" "with no filter."

I'm terrified to exist in this world of cancel culture, as I often find myself saying things that are very offensive in public. Fortunately I've been able to hold down a job at Adobe for nine years now without saying anything THAT "bad," but still I feel it's only a matter of time.

If I DO say something like the Anne Frank comment of that YouTuber, should I feel attacked if people don't let me say whatever it is my "disability" makes me say? Am I truly free to just say anything and just claim it was the Tourette's!? I don't think so. I think I'm still responsible for what I say, even if I don't mean to say it, because there's no way for someone to know if it's legitimate or not, and even if it was just Tourette's, I've just potentially injured people with my words.

This kind of makes me think about the plight of pedophiles. Is it their fault they're attracted to kids? No, but it is their fault if they act on it, because the kids can't (and definitely shouldn't) consent. If I "act" on my Tourette's, I feel like it's kind of still my fault. Though I recognize this is different because I don't really choose everything I say or do, but I can definitely hold it back and say nothing, though it's hard.

Also, if something is written, it's kind of hard to claim it was Tourette's because I could have gone back and edited it. Or maybe because of the lack of filter, it's not really my fault but my disability manifesting itself.

Even here on HN someone posted about an app they were creating for a very specific subset of people, and I mentioned that that reminded me of another thing that was made specifically for a subset of people, and I received a warning that if I kept up that kind of behavior, I would be banned from participating in future HN discussions.

Was that discrimination? Or was that me just overstepping societal norms that I could have definitely not posted, as it was in written form?

Trying to navigate the world with a disability is an often frustrating and frightening experience. Social norms are also often frightening and frustrating and inconsistently enforced.

As the world population has grown and the internet has facilitated more ability to interact with diverse populations, the opportunity for such friction has grown as well.

I appreciated reading your introspective comment where you shared that you have more questions than answers.

Wait, cognito hazards are real now?

Whelp, I never thought of it that way. Uh oh.

My comment from the last time this came up on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29754898

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A few points, mostly hypothesizing:

1. My understanding is that these videos often talk about very general symptoms, that could be caused by these mental disorders -- but also by a lot of other things.

2. The videos take on an authoritative tone, which does a good job of convincing people (especially kids). I've written about this phenomenon (albeit playing out in written form) on HN before:

> Welcome to the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> It's not hard to find highly opinionated people making assumptions while confidently believing they're right. If you look closely, you'll notice this all the time on HN and Reddit and basically anywhere that allows people to comment.

> The scary thing is that many readers will also often take anything said confidently enough to be fact. This is also basically how a lot of disinformation works. Say it authoritatively, and you'll become an authority on the matter to many people.

3. The 'nocebo' effect is very real! It's the opposite of a placebo effect, where if you believe you have an illness, your body actually starts showing symptoms.

4. I'd believe that in a lot of cases it's less about a kid consciously thinking "Ooh it's trendy to have this, let me say I do", and more like kids thinking "Oh this seems to be a widespread thing, and I experience these symptoms sometime (I space out! And I have trouble sleeping! And I have a jittery leg! and so on), sure seems like I might have this!"

5. Very important quote from article:

> "If you spend 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes viewing people talk about these disorders over and over again, that can make it seem like these conditions are a lot more prevalent than they actually are in the world,"

Repetition makes it seem like a bigger deal, and makes it stick around in the kids' head. So the next time they space out in the classroom naturally the thought might occur ("Do I have dissociative disorder?").

6. If lots of kids start showing up to doctors' saying they have (for eg) BPD when they don't, it'll be a lot harder for those with actual symptoms to convince doctors of their situation and receive proper medical care, which is very worrying.

______

All this said:

1. I'm just a user of the internet - not a psychologist, nor someone with relevant formal training, so please take my hypotheses as just that -- hypotheses, not fact.

2. I haven't actually watched many of these videos, so if someone has links, please share them! I think a lot of people on HN might like to watch them and analyse what's going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com