A growing number of teens are turning to social platforms for guidance, resources and support for their mental health, and to find conditions they think match their own — a trend that has alarmed parents, therapists and school counselors.
Over time, the teen started to self-identify with the creators, according to her mother, and became convinced she had the same diagnoses, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, autism, mysophobia and agoraphobia .
Using the internet to self-diagnose is not new, as many who have used WebMD already knows. And there can be some benefits. Some parents said social media has helped their teens get mental health information they've needed and has helped them feel less alone. According to Mitnaul, the most popular self-diagnoses he's encountering among teenagers are ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. He said teens previously would come to his clinic to discuss symptoms but did not have a particular diagnosis or label in mind. He started to notice a significant shift in 2021.
Social media users posting about psychiatric disorders are also often seen as trustworthy to teens, either because they too suffer from the disorder discussed in the video or because they self-identify as experts on the topic, experts say. TikTok told CNN it has taken steps to let users set regular screen time breaks and add safeguards that allocate a "maturity score" to videos detected as potentially containing mature or complex themes. The platform also has a parental control feature that allows parents to filter out videos with words or hashtags to help reduce the likelihood of their teen seeing content they may not want them to see.
She argues that when a student self-diagnoses based on information they've seen on the internet, it can often feel "like a sentencing … because there isn't always a mental health professional there to walk them through the complexity of the diagnosis, dispel myths and misconceptions, or to offer hope."For some, however, social media has had a positive impact on connecting people with mental health information or helping them feel less alone.
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