Have you seen ADHD content pop up in your feeds? Are you getting a lot of it? In the past few years, there's been a surge in the number of adults diagnosed with ADHD, and at the same time more and more people online are going viral with "signs" that you might have it too. Whether with our doctors or friends, we're all talking a lot more about adult ADHD. Is this a perfect storm of online content leading to more diagnoses? Or is there more to the story?Brittany is joined by culture journalist Kelli Maria Korducki, who wrote about this for The Guardian, and Manvir Singh, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis, to get into it.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. All right, y'all. This week, we are connecting the dots between TikTok, a neurological diagnosis, and that food molding in the back of your fridge. don't think these things are connected?
Well, Kelly, Manvir, and I are here to prove it to you. Kelly Maria Korducky is a culture journalist, and Manvir Singh is a professor of anthropology at UC Davis. Kelly, Manvir, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. I am so thrilled to have you both here. So to set the scene, let me share some videos that have been popping up on my social feed lately.
Rarely specific signs of ADHD. Your platter is trash. You can learn a new skill in record time. It will take me two weeks to pick my clothes up off the floor. You can remember really weird, minute details from the past. I can't remember why I've walked into a room.
These are all from the hashtag ADHD. And these kinds of videos from how to self-diagnose to how to manage a diagnosis are all over social feeds. And one study found that over a third of the claims about ADHD on social media weren't related at all to ADHD or even other diagnoses, but were instead just, quote, reflecting normal human experience.
Did you ever leave your laptop sitting outside by a tree? You might have ADHD.
all these online voices start to make it seem like anything could be a sign of a diagnosis. Now, I'm not trying to say ADHD looks one way or that it can't affect many parts of people's lives. Trust me, it affects many parts of mine. But this all has me wondering, what happens when a diagnosis goes viral?
And when people say, oh, that sounds like me, how do you separate personal identity from a diagnosable condition? So Kelly, Monvir, a lot to get into, but I wanna first focus on adults. Adult ADHD diagnoses have soared in recent years. Count me in that number. Kelly, your reporting showed that there was over a 100% increase. What's going on here? Why the increase?
You know, I think it's a variety of factors. One is simply awareness, increased awareness of ADHD characteristic symptoms during the pandemic in particular. Telemed was huge in the surge of prescription rates for ADHD medication, psychostimulant medications. These telemed providers came in just at the exact moment that many people expected
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