TikTok is giving loads of younger women tics and that is something I never thought I would be scared of but here we are.
Sociologist Dr Robert Bartholemew told AM that ‘TikTok tics’ are a form of mass psychogenic illness. Basically, there’s something unusual with the person (i.e. feeling sick or suffering from tics) even though there’s no real reason for it - “the placebo effect in reverse,” as Bartholomew puts it.
Cases of girls suffering from the phenomenon increased a lot once the world went into lockdown back in 2020, around when those who suffer from Tourettes were becoming popular on social media. The stress of lockdown combined with the online popularity of Tourettes’ sufferers led to the ‘TikTok tics’ spreading.
“During the lockdown, young girls were worried that their parents or their grandparents might die from covid,” Bartholemew said. “Then, their routines were disrupted because now you’re inside and you’re on your computer screen most of the time.”
“At the same time, this fad developed of people having Tourettes - there were billions of hits on Youtube and on TikTok - and these girls picked up these tics.”
Baylen Dupree is a popular Tiktoker with Tourettes syndrome. She has over 7 million followers and is very open about sharing her living experience with tics.
Bartholomew believes that this should lead to parents and caregivers, and everyone really, to be far more wary and cognisant of the content they consume online. Past cases of mass psychogenic illnesses have been limited to small groups, but because social media is literally everywhere and so invasive, it can lead to far more people suffering from an illness like, or even worse than, ‘TikTok tics’.
"The danger here is in the past you've had these cases that are self-limiting but because we've got now social media you've got thousands of girls around the world picking up these tics."
“The ‘TikTok tics’ have happened right under the noses of parents,” he told Stuff. “The danger here is that, if this can happen to thousands of adolescent girls around the world through social media, what’s next?
“We need to be paying attention, because there will be something else.”
