Tik-Tok is a popular social media platform that experienced exponential growth during the pandemic, especially among young people. According to Oberlo statistics (oberlo.com), Tik Tok users grew from half a million in 2020 to 755 million in 2022 and is projected to reach 900 million in 2024. “Going viral” took on a whole new meaning as evidence of mass psychogenic illness emerged.
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness or mass hysteria, is defined as a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to psychological factors rather than environmental or physiological factors” (Dictionary.com).
During the pandemic, when many children and adolescents were forced to be home during lockdowns, an interesting viral trend emerged. Young people began exhibiting symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome, a tic disorder, after watching videos on Tik-Tok in which others were displaying their tics. Were these symptoms emerging as a result of late-onset Tourette’s syndrome, or were they evidence of mass psychogenic illness?
A group of researchers interested in this viral response to Tik-Tok videos performed an analysis of videos of 28 influencers who videotaped themselves exhibiting vocal and motor tics. These influencers each had over 100,000 subscribers, with the average number of subscribers being 2.5 million. The research team analyzed over 1500 videos posted by the influencers, and there were 331 million total views of these videos at the time of the study. The period of review was March 30-31, 2021, about a year after the pandemic lockdowns began.
The researchers focused on the number of tics per minute shown in the videos as well as the anatomical distribution and severity of tics. Then, they compared this data to data from the research literature on Tourette’s patients. They found that the number and severity of tics shown in the videos was much greater than what is typical of Tourette’s patients.
For example, Tourette’s patients typically exhibit 0-13 tics per minute, but the influencers’ videos demonstrated an average of 29 tics per minute. In terms of severity of tics, only 14% of Tourette’s patients have tics so severe they are self-injurious, however, 85.7% of Tik-Toker videos exhibited self-injurious tics.
Surprisingly, 67.9% of these influencers admitted that they had developed new tics by watching other Tik-Tok users. Slightly over half of the influencers demonstrated the same vocal tic, saying the word “beans.”
Do these influencers actually suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome? Of those influencers who disclosed medical diagnoses, one-third stated they had a seizure disorder, 14% had functional neurological disorder, and 57% had a psychiatric disorder (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder). None disclosed that they had Tourette’s. Their motivations for filming their tics may have been monetary: 64.3% were selling merchandise related to their tics.
In discussing the findings of their study, the authors explained that Tik Tok tics are similar to “functional neurologic disorders” which are psychogenic in nature. They added, “we believe TikTok tics to be an example of social contagion or mass sociogenic illness, which involves behaviors, emotions, or conditions spreading spontaneously through a group or social network. Social media use has made this spread easier, faster, and wider” (p. 1204).
Olvera, C., Stebbins, G. T., Goetz, C. G., & Kompoliti, K. (2021). TikTok tics: A pandemic within a pandemic. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 8(8), 1200-1205. https://doi.org/10.1002/mdc3.13316