Study of top 100 ADHD TikToks finds significant misinformation about symptoms

In a new analysis, fewer than half of claims about attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in popular TikTok videos aligned with clinical standards, with young adults’ perceptions of the informational value of the videos differing from those of psychologists. Vasileia Karasavva of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 19, 2025.

Young adults increasingly use social media platforms such as TikTok as key sources of support and education about ADHD. While these platforms have powerful potential to benefit users interested in such content, they may also help to spread misinformation. However, few studies have examined the ADHD content encountered by social media users and how they interact with it. Karasavva and colleagues therefore assessed ADHD-related content on TikTok and compared how it is perceived by professionals versus young adults.

First, two of the researchers—both clinical psychologists and ADHD experts—assessed the content of the 100 most popular TikTok videos with the #ADHD hashtag. They found that fewer than half of the videos’ claims about ADHD symptoms were in accord with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is used by clinicians worldwide to diagnose mental disorders.

Next, the researchers asked 843 undergraduate students about their TikTok #ADHD viewing habits and their perceptions of TikTok videos previously ranked by the psychologists as the five they would be most likely to recommend as ADHD psychoeducation and the five they would be least likely to recommend.

Students either formally or self-diagnosed with ADHD reported watching #ADHD TikToks more frequently than students without ADHD. After statistically accounting for diagnosis and student demographics, the researchers found that students who watched #ADHD TikToks more frequently were more likely to say they would, themselves, recommend both the top- and bottom-five psychologist-ranked videos.

The researchers describe this study as a starting point for research exploring how ADHD is portrayed on TikTok. A better understanding of the discrepancies they identified between psychologists’ and young adults’ perceptions could help inform efforts to better serve people with ADHD.

The authors add: “TikToks about ADHD are very popular among young adults, however, often they do not match the scientific literature about ADHD. Additionally, people who consumed a large amount of ADHD-related TikToks also tended to overestimate ADHD's prevalence by as much as ten times and think more negatively about their own symptoms.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/41wlXvt

Citation: Karasavva V, Miller C, Groves N, Montiel A, Canu W, Mikami A (2025) A double-edged hashtag: Evaluation of #ADHD-related TikTok content and its associations with perceptions of ADHD. PLoS ONE 20(3): e0319335. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319335

Author countries: Canada, US

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.