Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T08:19:22.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social media and ADHD: implications for clinical assessment and treatment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2023

Y. Hartnett Open the ORCID record for Y. Hartnett [Opens in a new window]  and
E. Cummings
Y. Hartnett*
Affiliation:
Cluain Mhuire Community Mental Health Service, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland
E. Cummings
Affiliation:
Cluain Mhuire Community Mental Health Service, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland
*
Corresponding author: Y. Hartnett; Email: hartnety@tcd.ie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The interaction between social media use and mental health is complicated. The mental health information shared on these platforms is frequently of poor quality but has the potential to exert powerful influence on users. Social media trend peaks in some mental disorders have led to increases in illness behaviour through social contagion. There has been a marked upsurge in online interest in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) over the last number of years, which has been particularly noticeable since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The exponential increase in online ADHD interest has the potential to contribute to overloading mental health services with referrals. Mental health professionals and organisations need to consider strategies to ensure that quality health information is disseminated to younger audiences.

Keywords

Psychiatryattention deficit hyperactivity disorderonline health informationsocial media
Type
Perspective Piece
Information
Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 132 - 136
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of College of Psychiatrists of Ireland

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Able, SL, Johnston, JA, Adler, LA, Swindle, RW (2007). Functional and psychosocial impairment in adults with undiagnosed ADHD. Psychological Medicine 37, 97–107. doi:10.1017/s0033291706008713.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aiken, M (2016). The Cyber Effect. John Murray Press: London.Google Scholar
Amorelli, G, Martino, D, Pringsheim, T (2022). Rapid onset functional tic-like disorder outbreak: a challenging differential diagnosis in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 31, 144–151.Google ScholarPubMed
Basch, CH, Donelle, L, Fera, J, Jaime, C (2022). Deconstructing TikTok videos on mental health: cross-sectional, descriptive content analysis. JMIR Formative Research 6, e38340. doi:10.2196/38340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boer, M, Stevens, G, Finkenauer, C, van den Eijnden, R (2020). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder-symptoms, social media use intensity, and social media use problems in adolescents: investigating directionality. Child Development 91, e853–e865. doi:10.1111/cdev.13334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Comp, G, Dyer, S, Gottlieb, M (2021). Is TikTok the next social media frontier for medicine? AEM Education and Training 5. doi: 10.1002/aet2.10532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cumyn, L, French, L, Hechtman, L (2009). Comorbidity in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 54, 673–683. doi:10.1177/070674370905401004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daraz, L, Morrow, AS, Ponce, OJ, Beuschel, B, Farah, MH, Katabi, A, Alsawas, M, Majzoub, AM, Benkhadra, R, Seisa, MO, Ding, JF, Prokop, L, Murad, MH (2019). Can patients trust online health information? A meta-narrative systematic review addressing the quality of health information on the Internet. Journal of General Internal Medicine 34, 1884–1891. doi:10.1007/s11606-019-05109-0.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Faraone, SV, Biederman, J, Mick, E (2006). The age-dependent decline of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analysis of follow-up studies. Psychological Medicine 36, 159–165. doi:10.1017/s003329170500471x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forgie, EME, Lai, H, Cao, B, Stroulia, E, Greenshaw, AJ, Goez, H (2021). Social media and the transformation of the physician-patient relationship: viewpoint. Journal of Medical Internet Research 23, e25230. doi:10.2196/25230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
GBD 2019 Mental Disorders Collaborators (2019). Global, regional, and national burden of 12 mental disorders in 204 countries and territories, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. The Lancet Psychiatry 9, 137–150. doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(21)00395-3.Google Scholar
Giedinghagen, A (2023). The tic in TikTok and (where) all systems go: mass social media induced illness and Munchausen’s by internet as explanatory models for social media associated abnormal illness behavior. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 28, 270–278. doi:10.1177/13591045221098522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gift, TE, Reimherr, ML, Marchant, BK, Steans, TA, Reimherr, FW (2021). Wender Utah Rating Scale: psychometrics, clinical utility and implications regarding the elements of ADHD. Journal of Psychiatric Research 135, 181–188. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.01.013.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodyear, VA, Armour, KM, Wood, H (2019). Young people and their engagement with health-related social media: new perspectives. Sport, Education and Society 24, 673–688. doi:10.1080/13573322.2017.1423464.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Google. (2023). Trends (https://trends.google.com/home).Google Scholar
Hacking, I (1996). The Looping Effects of Human Kinds. In Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate (ed. Sperber, D, Premack, D and Premack, AJ). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I (2006). Making up people. Londen Review of Books (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n16/ian-hacking/making-up-people28).Google Scholar
Hari, J (2022). Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. Bloomsbury: London.Google Scholar
Harness, J, Getzen, H (2022). TikTok’s sick-role subculture and what to do about it. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 61, 351–353. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2021.09.312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslam, N (2016). Looping effects and the expanding concept of mental disorder. Official Journal of the Italian Society of Psychopathology 22, 4–9.Google Scholar
Health Service Executive. (2021). ADHD in adults national clinical programme: model of care for Ireland (https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/cspd/ncps/mental-health/adhd/adhd-in-adults-ncp-model-of-care/adhd-in-adults-ncp-model-of-care.pdf).Google Scholar
Herrman, J (2019). How TikTok is rewriting the world. The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html).Google Scholar
Heyman, I, Liang, H, Hedderly, T (2021). COVID-19 related increase in childhood tics and tic-like attacks. Archives of Disease in Childhood 106, 420–421. doi:10.1136/archdischild-2021-321748.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosch, WL (2023). YouTube (https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube).Google Scholar
Kang, S, Ha, JS, Velasco, T (2017). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on YouTube: framing, anchoring, and objectification in social media. Community Mental Health Journal 53, 445–451. doi:10.1007/s10597-016-0015-5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kasrrenakes, J (2021). TikTok is rolling out longer videos to everyone (https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/1/22558856/tiktok-videos-three-minutes-length).Google Scholar
Kessler, RC, Adler, L, Barkley, R, Biederman, J, Conners, CK, Demler, O, Faraone, SV, Greenhill, LL, Howes, MJ, Secnik, K, Spencer, T, Ustun, TB, Walters, EE, Zaslavsky, AM (2006). The prevalence and correlates of adult ADHD in the United States: results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. American Journal of Psychiatry 163, 716–723. doi:10.1176/ajp.2006.163.4.716.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lawton, R (2022). TikTok’s demographics tell you why Irish businesses need to be on TikTok in 2022 (https://www.friday.ie/blog/its-2022-irish-businesses-need-to-be-on-tiktok/)Google Scholar
Lindholm, SK, Wickström, A (2020). Looping effects related to young people’s mental health: how young people transform the meaning of psychiatric concepts. Global Studies of Childhood 10, 26–38. doi:10.1177/2043610619890058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorenz-Spreen, P, Mønsted, BM, Hövel, P, Lehmann, S (2019). Accelerating dynamics of collective attention. Nature Communications 10, 1759. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09311-w.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacKinnon, KR, Kia, H, Lacombe-Duncan, A (2021). Examining TikTok’s potential for community-engaged digital knowledge mobilization with equity-seeking groups. Journal of Medical Internet Research 23, e30315. doi:10.2196/30315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malaty, IA, Anderson, S, Bennett, SM, Budman, CL, Coffey, BJ, Coffman, KA, Greenberg, E, McGuire, JF, Müller-Vahl, KR, Okun, MS, Quezada, J, Robichaux-Viehoever, A, Black, KJ (2022). Diagnosis and Management of Functional Tic-Like Phenomena, Journal of Clinical Medicine 11, 6470. doi:10.3390/jcm11216470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marengo, D, Montag, C, Sindermann, C, Elhai, JD, Settanni, M (2021). Examining the links between active Facebook use, received likes, self-esteem and happiness: a study using objective social media data. Telematics and Informatics 58, 101523. doi:10.1016/j.tele.2020.101523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matz, SC, Kosinski, M, Nave, G, Stillwell, DJ (2017). Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 12714–12719. doi:10.1073/pnas.1710966114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCashin, D, Murphy, CM (2022). Using TikTok for public and youth mental health – a systematic review and content analysis. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 28, 279–306. doi:10.1177/13591045221106608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDermott, B, Ryan, M (2021). How we are using social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Service Executive (https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/communications/digital/blog/how-we-are-using-social-media-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html).Google Scholar
Meppelink, CS, Smit, EG, Fransen, ML, Diviani, N (2019). "I was right about vaccination": confirmation bias and health literacy in online health information seeking. Journal of Health Communication 24, 129–140. doi:10.1080/10810730.2019.1583701.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montag, C, Lachmann, B, Herrlich, M, Zweig, K (2019). Addictive features of social media/messenger platforms and freemium games against the background of psychological and economic theories. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16, 2612. doi:10.3390/ijerph16142612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller-Vahl, KR, Pisarenko, A, Jakubovski, E, Fremer, C (2022). Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness. Brain 145, 476–480. doi:10.1093/brain/awab316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, P, Cserháti, H, Rosdy, B, Bodó, T, Hegyi, M, Szamosújvári, J, Fogarasi, DJ, Fogarasi, A (2022). TikTok and tics: the possible role of social media in the exacerbation of tics during the COVID lockdown, (Tiktok és ticek: a közösségi média lehetséges szerepe a ticek exacerbációjában a Covid-járvány alatt.). Ideggyógyászati szemle 75, 211–216. doi:10.18071/isz.75.0211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakai, T, Tsuji, T, Tsuda, H, Sotodate, T, Namba, Y, Uenishi, T, Iwasaki, K, Kokubo, K, Tomita, H (2022). Working conditions, work productivity, quality of life, and depressive symptoms in undiagnosed adults with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 18, 1561–1572, 10.2147/ndt.S358085)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olvera, C, Stebbins, GT, Goetz, CG, Kompoliti, K (2021). TikTok tics: a pandemic within a pandemic. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice 8, 1200–1205. doi:10.1002/mdc3.13316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orben, A (2020). Teenagers, screens and social media: a narrative review of reviews and key studies. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 55, 407–414. doi:10.1007/s00127-019-01825-4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paulus, T, Bäumer, T, Verrel, J, Weissbach, A, Roessner, V, Beste, C, Münchau, A (2021). Pandemic tic-like behaviors following social media consumption. Movement Disorders 36, 2932–2935. doi:10.1002/mds.28800.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pretorius, C, McCashin, D, Coyle, D (2022). Mental health professionals as influencers on TikTok and Instagram: what role do they play in mental health literacy and help-seeking? Internet Interventions 30, 100591. doi:10.1016/j.invent.2022.100591.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ra, CK, Cho, J, Stone, MD, De La Cerda, J, Goldenson, NI, Moroney, E, Tung, I, Lee, SS, Leventhal, AM (2018). Association of digital media use with subsequent symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder among adolescents. JAMA 320, 255–263. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.8931.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raghavan, P (2022). Organizing The World’s Information. Brainstorm Tech: Aspen, CO, USA.Google Scholar
Schønning, V, Hjetland, GJ, Aarø, LE, Skogen, JC (2020). Social media use and mental health and well-being among adolescents - a scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology 11, 1949. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01949.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sibley, MH, Ortiz, M, Gaias, LM, Reyes, R, Joshi, M, Alexander, D, Graziano, P (2021). Top problems of adolescents and young adults with ADHD during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Psychiatric Research 136, 190–197. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.02.009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southern, MG (2022). Could TikTok be a search engine? For many users, it already is. Search Engine Journal (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/could-tiktok-be-a-search-engine-for-many-users-it-already-is/452871/).Google Scholar
Swart, J (2021). Experiencing algorithms: how young people understand, feel about, and engage with algorithmic news selection on social media. Social Media + Society 7, 20563051211008828. doi:10.1177/20563051211008828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thapa, P, Thapa, A, Khadka, N, Bhattarai, R, Jha, S, Khanal, A, Basnet, B (2018). YouTube lens to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a social media analysis. BMC Research Notes 11, 854. doi:10.1186/s13104-018-3962-9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
TikTok. (2023). TikTok creative center trend discovery: popular hashtags (https://ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter/inspiration/popular/hashtag/pc/en).Google Scholar
Ward, M, Ward, B, Warren, C, Silverstein, S, Ray, C, Paskhover, B, Kornitzer, J (2020). The quality of YouTube videos as an educational resource for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Pediatric Neurology 103, 84–85. doi:10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2019.04.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werling, AM, Walitza, S, Drechsler, R (2021). Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on screen media use in patients referred for ADHD to child and adolescent psychiatry: an introduction to problematic use of the internet in ADHD and results of a survey. Journal of Neural Transmission 128, 1033–1043. doi:10.1007/s00702-021-02332-0.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
West, C (2023). 27 TikTok stats marketers need to know in 2023 (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-stats/).Google Scholar
Yeung, A, Ng, E, Abi-Jaoude, E (2022). TikTok and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a cross-sectional study of social media content quality. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 67, 899–906. doi:10.1177/07067437221082854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zenone, M, Ow, N, Barbic, S (2021). TikTok and public health: a proposed research agenda. BMJ Global Health 6, e007648. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar