Young people are increasingly copying health symptoms they see in TikTok videos, a phenomenon one mental health app founder has dubbed “symptom borrowing,” as the Daily Mail’s Ciaran Foreman reports.
Josef Newton, who has lived with OCD and ADHD and founded the health-anxiety app Condri, describes symptom borrowing as noticing, reinterpreting, or expecting sensations and behaviours after watching others describe them online. “Attention, expectation and anxiety can amplify everyday physical feelings or behaviours that previously went unnoticed,” he said.
The mechanism, Newton explains, is partly algorithmic. Once a user watches a video about someone’s diagnosis, TikTok serves up a stream of similar content, making rare conditions feel familiar and personally relevant, and prompting viewers to scan their own minds and bodies for symptoms that may not actually be there.
The warning follows a University of East Anglia study of more than 5,000 social media posts, which found misinformation about ADHD and autism was “consistently higher on TikTok than other platforms.” UK ADHD diagnoses have risen roughly twentyfold since 2000. Dr. Eleanor Chatburn of UEA’s Norwich Medical School said that using social media to question one’s symptoms “can be a helpful starting point,” but such questions need to “lead to proper clinical assessment with a professional.”
Related on the SLP
Separately, a 2022 University of British Columbia-led study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry analyzed 100 TikTok videos about ADHD and found more than half were misleading, while only about a fifth were rated useful — most posted by people without medical training.
Newton stresses that borrowed symptoms can feel entirely genuine, and noticing one isn’t proof it’s insignificant. But he urges anyone who feels more frightened or compelled to keep searching after watching health content to step back. “Set a clear boundary: write down the concern, step away from symptom content and consult an appropriate professional or reputable medical source,” he said. “One qualified conversation is likely to be more useful than another hour of conflicting videos.”
