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social media spreading nervous tics?

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BostonCharlie
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social media spreading nervous tics?

Post by BostonCharlie »

Excerpts from this WSJ article (paywall). Emphasis mine.
Teenage girls across the globe have been showing up at doctors’ offices with tics—physical jerking movements and verbal outbursts—since the start of the pandemic.

Movement-disorder doctors were stumped at first. Girls with tics are rare, and these teens had an unusually high number of them, which had developed suddenly. After months of studying the patients and consulting with one another, experts at top pediatric hospitals in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. discovered that most of the girls had something in common: TikTok.

According to a spate of recent medical journal articles, doctors say the girls had been watching videos of TikTok influencers who said they had Tourette syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that causes people to make repetitive, involuntary movements or sounds.

...

Specialists at other major institutions have also reported similar surges. Since March 2020, Texas Children’s Hospital has reported seeing approximately 60 teens with such tics, whereas doctors there saw one or two cases a year before the pandemic. At the Johns Hopkins University Tourette’s Center, 10% to 20% of pediatric patients have described acute-onset tic-like behaviors, up from 2% to 3% a year before the pandemic, according to Joseph McGuire, an associate professor in the university’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Between March and June this year, Rush University Medical Center in Chicago said it saw 20 patients with these tics, up from 10 the full year before.

Doctors say most of the teens have previously diagnosed anxiety or depression that was brought on or exacerbated by the pandemic. ...
... Caroline Olvera, a movement-disorders fellow, noticed that numerous teens were saying the word “beans,” often in a British accent. Even patients who didn’t speak English were saying it. Some patients mentioned they had seen TikTok videos of others with tics.

Dr. Olvera created a TikTok account and started watching videos of teens and adults who said they had Tourette syndrome. She discovered that one top Tourette influencer was a Brit who often blurted out the word “beans.”

Dr. Olvera, who studied 3,000 such TikTok videos as part of her research, also found that 19 of the 28 most-followed Tourette influencers on TikTok reported developing new tics as a result of watching other creators’ videos.

Clusters of tic-like disorders have happened previously, including a famous case a decade ago in which several teens in upstate New York developed tics that were diagnosed as “mass psychogenic illness.”

Such cases were mostly confined to specific geographic locations, but social media appears to be providing a new way for psychological disorders to spread quickly around the world, according to a recent paper written by Mariam Hull, a child neurologist at Texas Children’s Hospital who specializes in pediatric movement disorders.
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The Sultan of SoWhat
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Re: social media spreading nervous tics?

Post by The Sultan of SoWhat »

Having been one myself once, I can say with confidence that teenagers are jerks. (No pun intended.)
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BostonCharlie
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Re: social media spreading nervous tics?

Post by BostonCharlie »

The Sultan of SoWhat wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 11:29 am Having been one myself once, I can say with confidence that teenagers are jerks. (No pun intended.)
Maybe it is a helpful example for all humanity. I used to wonder if we were all just self-satisfied primates with uncanny mimicry skills. After reading this I wonder if we aren't just perambulating mollusks: GIGO bundles of nerves with five senses and ten digits. It would explain a lot of the ridiculous things going on these days.

In any case, I propose that -- just as the invention of email gave us today's "spam" -- the word "beans" should be used to describe any absurd behavior or idea that is the direct result of online social media.
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Re: social media spreading nervous tics?

Post by JerryUStall »

It's concerning to hear about the surge in nervous tics among teenage girls and the connection with TikTok content. The power of social media to influence behaviors is truly fascinating and sometimes even worrisome. On a slightly different note, I've heard about Cheapest Followers, Likes & Views services – wondering how they fit into this broader conversation about the effects of social media on mental health and behavior. It's a complex issue that definitely needs more attention. Let's hope for more awareness and support for these teens dealing with challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
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Re: social media spreading nervous tics?

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In 1978, Berton Roueche wrote an article in The New Yorker about an outbreak of teenage mass hysteria (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/08/21/sandy).
It's worth reading in this context.
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Re: social media spreading nervous tics?

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Mass hysteria? Pull up footage of an Elvis and/or Beatles concerts. Lizard brains hungry to conform to and align with a trend larger than themselves. It’s definitely more prevalent in teens, but is also human nature.
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social media spreading nervous tics?

Post by Robotaz »

Tics and such have always been contagious.

Stuttering and common speech issues in kids are mostly learned by contagion. My aunt was a speech therapist and I was 3-4 years old and saying my R’s wrong because a kid at preschool did. They taught me at speech therapy to stop in 5 minutes.
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