🟡 TikTok Has An ADHD Problem

This week Sara Morrison at VOX dropped an article that put a spotlight on a problem I’ve noticed a lot this past year. The headline reads, “Scary easy. Sketchy as hell.”: How startups are pushing Adderall on TikTok.

She lays out how much ADHD misinformation is being made on the app and how companies are not only making insane amounts of money off it but in many cases fueling the problem. The first thing that stood out was a recent study that found,

“more than half of [ADHD videos] were misleading, and only a fifth were considered “useful.”

That means only 2 out of every 10 videos you’re watching is worth a damn. A lot of people, with little to no understanding of ADHD, are getting fed a lot of garbage and the ones that are feeding it to them are too often people who have been recently diagnosed in the last few years. They don’t fully understand that ADHD is not a one-size-fits-all condition but rather a very complex maze of nuance and contradictions that are ever-changing.

I can understand why this happens. We love to hyper-fixate on stuff that’s new. Getting a diagnosis can be a roller coaster of emotions. Shock, sadness, relief, joy, excitement, and lots of dopamine flooding into our brains from all the articles that made us go, “WOW, THAT WEIRD THING I DO THAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS BUT ME IS BECAUSE OF ADD?!”

It’s easy to feel like we’re an expert on something after doing a 3-day internet deep dive and wanting to share it. I also don’t expect someone with no science, media, or journalistic credentials to know how to present things in the right way. After all, if the algorithms are rewarding you of course you’re just gonna keep doing more of that.

The part that feels really dark is how much money companies are making off all this trash, for example, 🤯...

"Cerebral added ADHD treatment to its offerings in early 2021 ... its sales tenfold, signed up tens of thousands of new patients, got hundreds of millions of dollars in funding...and reached a valuation of $4.8 billion.”

The combination of record profits, using shotty health care practices, and leveraging influencers with no quality control is a bad recipe. It doesn't help that there is no standardized testing for ADHD which creates these wild wild west conditions

It's one thing for an influencer to play it fast and loose with the facts but the companies do it too and it's super sketch...

Done also promotes from its own account information that could be considered misleading. One video implies that people with ADHD can hear two songs at the same time — something that plenty of people who don’t have ADHD can also do. (Done said that the ad says the ability to hear two songs is a “rumor” and not meant to be or described as professional advice.)

Why would a health care company promote a rumor?! This other ad from Done showed up in my feed last year...

"ADHD, solved" WTF?! 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩. The false hope that if you just give them your money they'll give you a quick prescription and you're off riding a unicorn to neurotypical land is really messed up.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that so many people have gotten a diagnosis because of these companies or seeing a video on TikTok but I spend a lot of time having to untangle the mess they make. The ADHD journey is lifelong and requires lots of different tools to manage and won’t be “done” after a 15min zoom call and some pills.

It's also great people can get access to ADHD care quickly and easily. In places like the UK, it can take a year or more to get a diagnosis. The need for care is enormous, companies can make a lot of money and help people get care without all the fuckery.

Do better.

—Hyla

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