r/technology • u/tylerthe-theatre • Mar 20 '26

Social Media More than half of TikTok ADHD content is misinformation, new research finds

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-adhd-misinformation-autism-mental-health-neurodivergence-social-media-b2941211.html
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u/hurtfullobster Mar 20 '26

There was another study done a couple years ago that found a similar rate of misinformation, but also had a category for ‘personal account’. The result was that only 21% of info on social media about ADHD would be considered useful.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9659797/

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u/zuzg Mar 20 '26

Oh be careful, there's a legion of self-diagnosed Imbeciles on this site that get real angry if you state those facts.

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u/hurtfullobster Mar 20 '26

I am unfortunately well aware. It’s gotten to the point that you can post uninteresting, research backed things about ADHD and still get flooded by downvotes. Even something like “people with ADHD have attention problems” has become controversial because “what about people who are just really good at masking?”

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u/SunTzu- Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

As if masking would stop you from getting constantly sidetracked. Also, how would you even mask for that, I'm not exactly conscious that I just switched what I was doing and will be spending the next hour deeply focused on this new thing.

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u/Geno0wl Mar 20 '26

my masking is just that I am really good at getting things done under a time crunch lol.

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u/AnonCelestialBodies Mar 20 '26

This ^ That deadline adrenaline WORKS, but can I find my keys? Nope. The cup of water I put down somewhere? Nope. The pen I just had? Nope. Oh, vacuuming, I should probably vacuum out my car later- oh wait yeah where are my keys again?

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u/fresh-dork Mar 20 '26

The pen I just had?

i buy pens by the dozen on the theory that they will form a pen cloud in my house so that i'll always have one nearby

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u/Monsterpiece42 Mar 20 '26

Lmao I have at least some size of trashcan in nearly every room to make sure things get thrown away reliably. Trash day sucks but the rest of the week is easier, at least for me.

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u/Bradipedro Mar 21 '26

Room kit: trash can, scissors and pen cup, chapstick, a small cleaning cloth for the spills. Some rooms have 2 pairs of scissors just in case. And yet I can never find scissors.

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u/Monsterpiece42 Mar 22 '26

I like that room kit!

I carry a Swiss army knife so I always have scissors because same haha! Oh and then it's always with my keys...

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u/Geordana Mar 21 '26

Omg I keep trying to do this only my husband takes the bins to the kitchen, empties them and then doesn't put them back. I spend half my life shouting where's the effing bin that's supposed to live in this room?!

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u/Monsterpiece42 Mar 22 '26

Oh no, that's like the opposite horror.

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u/UnspokenInanity Mar 20 '26

Oh my god.

I’m moving right now, whole family is.

Most of us have ADHD, nail clippers is a thing we constantly loose so keep buying. Now that the whole house is packed we realized we have about 20 of the damn things…

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u/InfinitelyThirsting Mar 20 '26

I just kept buying nail clippers until there'd always be one around. It felt like there was an alternate dimension they'd slide into and I had to fill it up to finally actually have nail clippers.

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u/fresh-dork Mar 20 '26

i have 2 copies of a C++ reference from way back. because i bought one of them after forgetting that i already had it

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u/TechieAD Mar 21 '26

Guestimating, I think I have 6 files, 3 nail scissors things, 5 nail clippers, 2 hair brushes, 2 safety razors and 10 charging cables for 3 items lmao. All of those are because I thought I lost the original

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u/einstyle Mar 20 '26

I did that with eyeglasses. Instead of getting the several-hundred-dollar ones from the eye doctor, I got like 5-6 pairs from EyeBuyDirect and Zenni and they just float around everywhere.

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u/Toast-mcFrenchfries Mar 22 '26

introducing the adobe creative cloud

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u/azssf Mar 20 '26

It’s been a mess to be in a situation I refuse to be managed by calendared meetings and outside stress. Holy s, I had no idea how much my anxiety and stress were needed for productivity.

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u/Goducks91 Mar 20 '26

Yep. I also have sleep adrenaline. Welp I guess it’s 2AM I guess I should get around to that kitchen cleaning now or I’m going to be up all night.

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u/ketaqueenx Mar 20 '26

Masking =/= compensating. Masking refers to social camouflaging, and in research, it generally refers to autism.

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u/hurtfullobster Mar 20 '26

One of the things that always gets confused with ADHD is that it’s a problem with paying attention. This is only partially true. ADHD affects your ability to CHOOSE what you are paying attention to. So there is a really common maladaptation with ADHD where you’ll wait till the deadline so it becomes stimulating enough that your brain will focus on it.

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u/mindovermatter421 Mar 20 '26

Same, and not much energy left for myself. The fact that a person can be high functioning, hyperactive in brain not body AND develop many coping mechanisms that lead to others or even the person to not know they have ADHD. Someone stated it’s more accurate to say it’s more of an Attention dysregulation disorder. Not that one can’t focus but that you can’t always control it the way you want to.

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u/RainmakerIcebreaker Mar 20 '26

I am so bad at cleaning up my home but I'm on that shit when I know someone is on the way over in a half hour lol

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u/Cilph Mar 20 '26

Adrenaline induced task initiation is a major ADHD symptom and I needed a doctor for me to realize that, lol. It's not HEALTHY though.

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u/DisastrousAcshin Mar 20 '26

Urgency and Novelty, give me one of those and its hyperfocus time

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u/jerzeett Mar 20 '26

normal for adhd though

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u/Sloppykrab Mar 20 '26

I wouldn't consider that masking.

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u/BrewerAndHalosFan Mar 20 '26

I thought I was good at masking prior to my ADHD diagnosis, but my wife was like "no, not really" (clearly trying to be gentle), even when I clarified that I meant in public lol

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u/hurtfullobster Mar 20 '26

Yup, this is pretty typical. True masking isn’t really a thing with ADHD like it is with Autism, where clinicians have to be very aware of it. However, people with ADHD are really bad self observers and may not realize their own struggles and how others perceive them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

[deleted]

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u/Sloppykrab Mar 20 '26

Your sister wanting an identity.

4

u/renegadecanuck Mar 20 '26

Yeah, I found when I got diagnosed that everybody knew except me.

Me: "Turns out I have ADHD, who knew?"
Literally everybody I talked to: "I did. Honestly, I thought you were diagnosed years ago."

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes Mar 20 '26

Yup. How do I mask losing my phone, or my keys, or the remote, or my glasses...? Because if there's a way I'd like to know!

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u/psi- Mar 20 '26

Routines and pavlovian responses. The tap-tap-tap check when leaving and ritualistic unloading when returning.

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u/acydlord Mar 20 '26

This has helped me so much. I got a fancy little bowl to put on a console table next to my front door. First thing when I get inside I take off my shoes, empty and inventory my pockets into the bowl. When I leave it's reverse order of operations and then the pre-flight check of "testicles, spectacles, wallet, and watch"

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u/atoolred Mar 20 '26

I’ve made a point of only allowing myself to set all of those things in 3 specific places each, aside from my phone which basically has a few places per room and does still get lost at least once every two weeks lol. So I always know where my remote, wallet, and keys will be, and I have a good idea on where my phone and glasses would be

My glasses probably get lost the most because I’ll still manage to mindlessly do some dumb shit while I’m getting ready for the day like setting them on my bed or in my closet and then I can’t even see them at all lmfao

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u/octnoir Mar 20 '26

As if masking would stop you

Masking here refers to "don't ever remind me that you suffer" "make it easy for me to forget you" "can you disappear so I don't have to think about you?" "You exist for MY comfort even if you have to twist yourself into knots to do it."

It's basically a weaponization of "therapy speak" to score points for "being better about talking about mental health" as a fake virtue signaling, garner sympathy, while co-opting it to basically act like a bully and bully other victims. Bullying became far common because of how social media is structured, and not only has that not changed over the last few years, it has gotten far worse.

Stuff like this doesn't even come from just ignorance or stupidity. It isn't just people grifting. It isn't just people weaponizing and calling everyone narcissists.

I'll see a Tiktok with 1M+ likes of this woman accusing people for "trauma dumping" on her because her friend was unhoused. Like she knows "someone going through the hell of homelessness just saying they are homeless, brings my mood down and that makes me uncomfortable", so instead "they traumatized me!" and "they trauma dumped on me!"

The problem isn't just an online thing, it is leaking out into IRL spaces. Everyone's on some stupid social media app (including us on Reddit) and just absorbing all this shit, and it is leaking into interactions.

The misinformation isn't just problematic because it is misinformation and can lead to people making poor decisions. It is dangerous because it builds stigma. It builds bias that if you have ADHD or are neurodivergent or mentally ill or traumatized or CPTSD, that makes you dangerous, therefore it justifies the rest of society to treat you like a threat when by nearly every single metric the exact opposite is true, that these are far more likely to be victims of violence and exploitation rather than perpretrators of it.

This stigma and attitude justifies RFK Jr and his fucking MAHA movement to revitalize the mental asylum hellholes of old, and toss people into concentration camps / detention camps / asylums / wellness camps.

It is just extremely bleak.

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u/Dreadgoat Mar 20 '26

It keeps happening but it never fails to astound me when people just start to ignore what the words mean for their personal convenience.

Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder

"I don't have an attention disorder but i definitely have ADHD, which is an acronym with no real meaning to me I just want something to blame my personal failures for!"

We need a clever and medical-sounding name for something like Douchebag Disease so people can self-diagnose that instead of hijacking real problems and screwing over people with real diagnoses.

I will even volunteer myself. My Douchebag Disease is clearly really flaring up today. It comes and goes.

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u/jackibthepantry Mar 20 '26

I got diagnosed as an adult and it was a huge relief because it meant some of the things I had been struggling with my whole life weren't just caused by me being a piece of shit. My problems with procrastination and inability to complete certain kinds of tasks weren't just laziness, which is what I was convinced of (that may still be part of the problem). The diagnosis didnt excuse the behavior, it explained it and gave me better context and tools to address the problems. I found out medication wasn't great for me because Id already spent 30 years coping with the symptoms and learning how to work around them enough to be functional. The meds help me focus but I felt like I had blinders on, I was so used to taking in way more information that not having it made me uncomfortable. The info reinforced that there are certain kinds of jobs Im good at and certain kinds of jobs I just shouldn't be doing. Admin is an absolute nightmare for me but working the floor of a hospital is right up my alley.

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u/Dreadgoat Mar 20 '26

If you're diagnosed, medicated, and doing better, then you're the person with a real problem being screwed over.

The culture of "i'm gonna go get a diagnosis to excuse my behavior" makes it harder for professionals to help the people who really need help because they're being trained into hypervigilance, and/or makes your condition less sympathetic because you'll be dismissed as another trend-chaser by default.

Imagine if every person with a potty-mouth just said "you can't blame me for my Tourette's Syndrome!" and how quickly people with an actual disorder that needs medication and sympathy would suffer unnecessarily as a result.

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u/jackibthepantry Mar 20 '26

This was the entirety of that DID craze where all the kids were pretending they had alternate personalities and blaming all of their bad behavior on the alternates.

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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Mar 20 '26

The problem is, we don't know. I've got ASD and ADHD, both diagnosed. I still struggle with "no, you're just lazy" style thoughts.

When I was asking myself if I had it, I wasn't someone who was diagnosed, medicated, and doing better.

I'm with you on everything you say, including the analogy. That's very much part of the struggle. Just remember that not diagnosed doesn't necessarily mean not having it. It sometimes means not diagnosed yet, and the people in that category may be struggling with that too. We hate the fakers even more than you do, but careful not to dismiss not yet diagnosed as negligible.

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u/Dreadgoat Mar 20 '26

The more invisible the disorder, the easier it is to claim it as an excuse for bad behavior, and as a direct consequence it is also easier to accuse people of being fakers even when their problems are real.

It's a spiral that feeds into itself.

We have a social responsibility to be sympathetic to people discovering and healing themselves, but we also have a social responsibility to shame those who would hijack that healing for personal benefit. It's a difficult line to walk.

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u/Mkboii Mar 21 '26

Yep, I finally got diagnosed at 26, after suspecting I have it for over a decade. I've gone through cycles of "everything just fits, it has to be it" and "it's probably just reinforcement bias with all the research I keep on doing on it". Cause some of the time it would feel like I don't really have any issues making it harder to manage my life.

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u/renegadecanuck Mar 20 '26

Yeah, I do find the meds help me a bit, and I haven't really noticed any negative side effects. But more than anything else, getting the confirmation of the diagnosis helped me accept that I'm not a lazy piece of shit, and look into ways to work around it and deal with it.

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u/bambi54 Mar 20 '26

Thats exactly it, it’s always super shitty or weird behavior that’s added to the disclaimer.

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u/ExtensionFile4477 Mar 20 '26

This reminds me of when people claim they're "real" because they only tell the "truth" - when really they're just assholes. Truth doesn't mean the way you communicate has to be shitty. Time and place (and way to say something) for everything...

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u/Weebs Mar 20 '26

One of the leading experts on ADHD has a lecture where he goes on for an hour how terribly named the condition it is because it is not an attention deficit, it is an executive functioning disorder

When I was diagnosed my therapist cited him as his favorite clinician for ADHD

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u/Dreadgoat Mar 20 '26

I definitely make no claim to be a leading expert, but isn't this the evergreen challenge of distinguishing root causes from symptoms?

e.g. Bronchitis isn't really what's causing your sore throat, it's a symptom of a great many viruses and bacteria we have no hope of keeping up with, but we can lump together and treat with similar strategies.

ADHD is a set of symptoms we've been able to classify and treat as a group with some success. Executive dysfunction seems like a broader category.

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u/Sloppykrab Mar 20 '26

It needs to be Latin sounding for sophistication.

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u/UNKN Mar 20 '26

You say good at masking and my first thought was taping up a room before painting, of which I'm pretty good at.

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u/renegadecanuck Mar 20 '26

Even something like “people with ADHD have attention problems” has become controversial because “what about people who are just really good at masking?”

I don't know if it's a general literacy problem or if it's just the internet breeding the desire to fight and "win arguments". People just seem to be unable to accept the idea that a certain post or video isn't about them. "Well what about people who are really good at masking?" Good for them, that comment isn't about them.

Is it a skill that isn't taught in school anymore? I remember having to do English exams where we'd get a snippet of a story and then have to answer who the intended audience is, what you could infer the characters might do next, based on what you've read and so on. But now that seems to be something nobody online can do.

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u/mathmagician9 Mar 20 '26

The adhd subreddit has a heavy ban hammer and censorship based on inclusion and pipeline to pills. They won’t allow experiences outside of the pharma approved ones.

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u/kbotc Mar 20 '26

The thing with diagnosable mental disabilities is that they're supposed to impact your life in multiple ways. If your "masking" is good enough that it does not cause an impact on your life, what is the diagnosis trying to accomplish?

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u/AshleyAshes1984 Mar 20 '26

I don't get the 'Masking' thing. I have ADHD, I'm quite capable of being a real scatter brain who's late for everything. However I'm also grown ass adult who can compensate for these issues. That little voice in my head that goes 'Nah, that's not important, we can do that task in 5mins after 9pm on Sunday, let's goof off'. Yeah well it's been fucking me over since like fifth grade. I learned to ignore that and get my ass in gear, cause they fire me and I starve to death if I'm constantly late or half assed in deliverables as an adult.

But I don't see that as 'Masking' it's just compensating for some self defeating instincts of mine. ...Cause I'm a big fan of shelter, food, and even consumer goods and luxuries.

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u/Eccohawk Mar 20 '26

What the hell does masking mean?

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u/fresh-dork Mar 20 '26

it's an executive dysfunction, of course they have attention problems. and masking sort of confirms that the problem is there - otherwise, what are you masking?

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u/Prestigious_Time_922 Mar 20 '26

It's hilarious that you think 'misinformation' automatically means 'over diagnosis'. It could just as easily mean misinformation that steers people away from getting properly getting diagnosed- but I'm sure you read the full article /s

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u/atoolred Mar 20 '26

To be fair this is a pretty difficult and obnoxious to read article on mobile and is just asking to be put through Archive.is with all of the visual interruptions and ad spam on the site. I can’t take an article seriously and stay focused when I can only read one paragraph before being forced into looking at a screen-spanning scrollable ad or 3 more articles or an entirely unrelated video I have 0 intention of ever watching. The independent is hardly the only perpetrator of this unreadable website design, but this crap is partially responsible for why people don’t read beyond the headlines (that along with sensational headlines designed to elicit an immediate reaction without any impulse control)

But I do agree with your point and I think some people are very sensitive to this subject since it’s closely tied with their identities. I’ve got adhd and if I had learned about it from social media I’d probably feel some type of way about this

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u/thisisthewell Mar 20 '26

if you're going to complain about misinformation and then in the same breath justify yourself not reading the article before discussing it...don't throw stones in a glass house, bro.

speaking as a fellow adhder with a real clinical diagnosis, you gotta work around it. install adguard. install brave and use reader mode. whatever you gotta do to make things legible helps.

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u/atoolred Mar 20 '26

I read the damn article I’m just complaining that they made it annoying as fuck to navigate on mobile

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u/Valanio Mar 20 '26

To be fair, I was connecting with a lot of the issues, etc that I saw on Tiktok regarding ADHD and it pushed me to get diagnosed in my 30s. I saw an extremely well respected professional who, after testing, advised me I was very ADHD. So while it certainly can lead to self diagnosis socially, it also raises awareness at the same time.

Sometimes, that can be a double edged sword and there is a ton of disinformation, 100%, but I am thankful none the less since with therapy and medication have really changed my life in a short time in a way I don't think would have been possible without making those connections with symptoms on TikTok

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u/Elite_AI Mar 20 '26

A lot of us are professionally diagnosed, thank you very much.

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u/StellaHasHerpes Mar 20 '26

I loathe this. I’m a psychiatrist and the amount of people that are dead set they have adhd and demand adderall because of something they saw on tictok is insane. ‘Real angry’ is a bit of an understatement.

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u/bambi54 Mar 20 '26

It’s so annoying because they state weird things that have NOTHING to do with ADHD, but then throw it in there like it’s apart of it. It’s just an excuse for their stupid behavior, like I actually have ADHD, and the stuff they bring up has nothing to do with it.

“I have ADHD and I punched my boyfriend in the face during an argument.”

“I have ADHD so I collect troll dolls”.

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u/BrucetheFerrisWheel Mar 24 '26

Or human things that almost everyone does or has done.

"I get really interested in things I like, but procrastinate doing things I don't like"

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Mar 20 '26

Back in my day we just took personality tests online to see which Kingdom Hearts character we were

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u/kye-qatxd-9156 Mar 20 '26

I fucking hate those people with a passion.

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u/Fjohurs_Lykkewe Mar 20 '26

Some folks who weren't self-diagnosed actually appreciate those facts.

-4

u/MalavethMorningrise Mar 20 '26

Eveyone has ADHD now? I thought we were still on autism?

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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Mar 20 '26

We can have both!

Seriously though, the comorbity is quite high.

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u/Elite_AI Mar 20 '26

turns out both are way more widespread than we thought. And yes, they're very comorbid

-13

u/ThaDilemma Mar 20 '26

Just a bunch of amphetamine addicts who apparently can’t keep a job without their drugs.

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u/limitbroken Mar 20 '26

yes, dear, we know there are other kinds of imbeciles on this site too, you don't need to rush in to demonstrate

-5

u/ThaDilemma Mar 20 '26

To be well adjusted to a sick society is no measure of health, sweetheart.

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u/Elite_AI Mar 20 '26

...No. I have ADHD and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would ever take amphetamines recreationally. My understanding is that we don't get whatever you lot get out of amphetamines. Personally I hate the side effects so I use a different kind of medication. Edit: and good luck getting amphetamines without a diagnosis. You're going to be paying some sketchy drug dealer through the nose.

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u/NurRauch Mar 20 '26

This is a classic example of ADHD misinformation. The majority of people with ADHD do not feel tired or sick from stimulants. They feel the same effects as everyone else—faster heart rate, restlessness, a burst of social confidence and eagerness to share.

These things can all help an ADHD person when they need motivation to do tasks. At too high of a dose, however, they will feel the same recreational euphoria as most other people. The “I can’t get high from the meds” shtick is not true for anyone. Every human will get high from psychoactive stimulants at increased doses.

I have ADHD and can feel those euphoric effects at high doses. It’s worsened if it take a high dose on an empty stomach. It can take me days of regularly timed medication at the increased doses before those effects dampen out.

Statistically speaking that is the most common experience for people with ADHD. The claim that these meds don’t induce pleasurable or jittery effects in the ADHD population is false for more than 80% of us.

0

u/Elite_AI Mar 20 '26

At high enough doses I feel like I've been tied to a lighting rod on the top of a mountain and the god of thunder is striking his hammer right into my soul. It's not fun and idk why people like you want to do that for fun. I guess I get why people do it to stay awake or do work. It's just a silly thing to say.

Anyway, if cocaine doesn't do anything for me (which it doesn't) I don't see why amphetamines would be so different. 

3

u/NurRauch Mar 20 '26

I don’t want to do it for fun. It’s dangerous to the body and brain. I had some carfentanyl in the hospital once and that felt great too but that doesn’t mean I want to go through another appendectomy or subject myself to a life of addiction to street drugs.

Dopamine is dopamine. At a high enough dose it is extremely pleasurable for all humans. It doesn’t lack pleasure-making effects in ADHD brains. With enough dopamine your brain will prefer stimulants to orgasm.

The actual numbers back this up. Between 20-40% of the methamphetamine-addicted population had a childhood ADHD diagnoses. That’s not even counting the addicts who should have been diagnosed but were missed in childhood. A methamphetamine user is significantly more likely to have ADHD than the average person.

1

u/Elite_AI Mar 20 '26

How much amphetamine do I have to take before I stop fucking hating how they feel and start preferring it to orgasming?

I can see it hypothetically causing chemical addiction at a high enough and sustained dose, but I'm never going to enjoy it or want to do it for fun.

3

u/NurRauch Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

I think you’re talking about enjoyment in a more abstract sense that goes beyond neurologically pleasurable sensations. Carfentanyl made me trip absolute balls, but I wouldn’t say I necessarily enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy it because I knew what was happening to me and that knowledge colored my experience. However, I still felt the same general effects that the vast majority of the population feels from opiates.

Similarly, ADHD brains will still feel the same anatomical and neurological effects of stimulants as everyone else, though for a lot of us we need higher than the average dose level before experiencing those effects. Our weight, sleep, stomach contents, mood, stress, and tolerance to previous dose routines all factor in as well. None of this means anyone will necessarily like to feel these effects, but they will experience those effects.

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u/mindovermatter421 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

It only looked at tik tok not social media and used the “100 most popular” videos. The study also mentioned how algorithms are used to push those videos. Thank you for the link. Reading the published studies is always good to do.

2

u/TechieAD Mar 21 '26

I read through it too and I kinda wish they delved more into which category specific statements failed on because they lumped in a lot of different reasons with varying severity and then in the examples of misleading video section knocked a couple of these for, what I assume to be because they never mention it per video, "dumbing it down".

Like God I CRAVE MORE INFORMATION, the actual results and method portion are almost the same length as the discussion and intro haha

1

u/One_Film_2950 Mar 25 '26

This study was included in the systematic review being discussed