As many of you can agree, TikTok has become a staple in the lives of many young people over the past few years. Millions of hours have been wasted away watching mind melting repetitive dances, sounds, and trends on the app since its release in 2016. From 2018 to August 2020, TikTok reported an 800% increase in its user base to a total of 100 million users in the United States and 700 million around the globe (Olvera et al., 2021). However, with the beginning of the global pandemic there has been a corresponding increase in sudden onset uncontrollable physical and verbal tics in teenagers (mostly female) due to their increased activity on TikTock (Is TikTok Causing Tics in Teen Girls?, 2021).
Resembling symptoms seen in Tourette’s Syndrome, Tiktok tics are expressed in a variety of ways, with the most common varieties of tics being vocal tics and motor tics (Olvera et al., 2021). Vocal tics involve subjects involuntarily spouting random, sometimes obscene words or phrases as well as frequent whistling. On the contrary, motor tics involve muscular spasms typically presenting in the arms, head and eyes. These tics gained from watching TikTock have been categorized as severe, occurring on average 29 times a minute, or approximately one every two seconds. Comparing this to typical Tourette syndrome, there is a significant increase from the traditional average of 0-13 tics per minute. Having a severe occurrence rate, TikTok tics severely debilitate the social lives of those affected, not to mention the blurting out of obscenities in inappropriate circumstances, say at church for example.
At this point in time, the physiological mechanisms for TikTock tics is still unknown, yet there are several theories for the onset of tics involving the increased stress and anxiety due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The most prominent theory for onset of tics is the result of prolonged viewing of TikTok influencers that already express tics in their videos themselves (Pringsheim et al., 2021). Upon recurring viewing of these influencers, neurologists believe it could present as a trigger for TikTok tics. With increased social isolation, time spent on social media including TikTok has dramatically increased compared to pre-pandemic times. TikTok’s trends frequently involve repetitive music and dance moves, and combining the increase time on social media with the decreased social interaction due to the pandemic is theorized to be another trigger for onset of tics.
Now next time you are wasting time on TikTok, maybe take a break and clear your head of the repetitive noises. Or just delete the app and read a book, up to you.
Is TikTok Causing Tics in Teen Girls? What Parents Need to Know. Cleveland Clinic. (2021). Retrieved 23 November 2021, from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/tiktok-causing-tics-in-teen-girls/.
Olvera, C., Stebbins, G. T., Goetz, C. G., & Kompoliti, K. (2021). TikTok tics: a pandemic within a pandemic. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice.
Pringsheim, T., Ganos, C., McGuire, J. F., Hedderly, T., Woods, D., Gilbert, D. L., Piacentini, J., Russell D., & Martino, D. (2021). Rapid Onset Functional Tic‐Like Behaviors in Young Females During the COVID‐19 Pandemic. Movement Disorders.
Austin this was a great read. It really struck out to me when you started talking about Tics because I generally have this strange fear of them. I don’t know about you, but when I witness a person having an episode of Tics I must look away as I feel as though it may spread like the plague. I always had this inkling feeling that Tics were developed from stress and erratic behavior. Yes, there is a genetic component to this disorder, being autosomal dominant. But your article/post just further pushed how Tics can spike out of nowhere and from anything. I was reading a little post from molecular labs, and they said that Tics do come from the gene, but more importantly an autoimmune response to an infection cause the onset of Tics. Perhaps the girls who developed tics from tiktok had covid, somehow had an infection that damaged neuronal connections and led to onset of Tics. Our immune system isn’t too selective at first when it chooses who to attack. Before it develops that specificity, it will sample healthy cells and damage them in the process. This result could lead to onset of Tics. TikTok would make sense to cause a Tic episode because each post uses the same exact loud, dubstep sound sample, and I believe repetition is what can cause a Tic. I know that is my teacher in elementary who suffer from Tourette’s dislike doing the same thing repeatedly, just to avoid an instance of Tics. Overall, this was a great read.
ReplyDeleteSnipbit from molecular labs: https://www.moleculeralabs.com/tic-disorders-in-adults/
Hey Austin, I found your post insightful and enjoyable to read. I personally do not have a TikTok, but these days even without one it is impossible to not be sent videos or see them on other social media platforms. The other day I was listening to a podcast and one of the hosts mentioned that they fall asleep to TikTok videos. This got me thinking about all the research that has been done on screen time and sleeping habits. While I agree that this new rise in TikTok tics is something to further evaluate, I think that the association between increased screen time seen with the release of this application and sleep is also worth discussing. Especially because extensive research has found a negative correlation between screen time and sleep. A study that evaluated sleep and mental health in undergraduate students found that a majority of undergrad students have poor sleep habits and their habits got worse throughout their time in college. These poor sleep habits lead to less sleep and worse mental health, but also overall negative health habits (Milojevich and Lukowski, 2016). It is common knowledge that people’s brains aren’t fully developed until about the age of 26. Proper brain development has been associated with sleep. Since a majority of the people who are using social media are adolescents to young adults it does put into question whether brain development is being impaired by social media. A research study done in 2016 evaluated sleeping habits in adolescents and the impact it is having on their brain development. The study concluded that sleep is crucial for cognitive function, well being, and brain development (Tarokh, et al, 2016). It has been well noted that people will stay up later than usual watching TikTok videos, thus impacting how much sleep they get and their overall sleeping habits. However, I would also be curious to see if there is any research on how this application impacts people’s sleep cycle. Do people spend less time in each sleep stage? Do these TikTok tics impact people’s ability to fall asleep? Does this application affect sleep differently than general screen time? Ethically one could discuss the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence in the simple question of whether TikTok really worth losing sleep over.
ReplyDeleteMilojevich HM, Lukowski AF. Sleep and Mental Health in Undergraduate Students with Generally Healthy Sleep Habits. PLoS One. 2016 Jun 9;11(6):e0156372. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156372. PMID: 27280714; PMCID: PMC4900547.
Tarokh L, Saletin JM, Carskadon MA. Sleep in adolescence: Physiology, cognition and mental health. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2016 Nov;70:182-188. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.08.008. Epub 2016 Aug 13. PMID: 27531236; PMCID: PMC5074885.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting read! I can admit, over quarantine I caved and downloaded TikTok. I spent pretty much a majority of my free time on it. Now, it's not as much but I do have the guilty pleasure of going on TikTok when I take breaks from doing school work. Was there any indication as to why it is most prevalent in females? I was looking at some of the epidemiology of typical Tourette Syndrome, and in general boys were three times more likely than girls to have it, but this is data from a 2016-2017 study. Additionally, there is no cure for Tourette Syndrome, but there are many treatments that could help with management. With Tiktok Tics, does it go away eventually or is this something now that these individuals have to live with and receive treatments for? It'll be interesting to see more data as research on this continues.
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/tourette/facts.html
Hi Austin,
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting connection between the application Tiktok and the disease, Tics. I do think that increased screen time in social media applications as well as in isolation has increased the risk of developing health issues such as myopia, obesity, and neurological issues. I was surprised to see that there was research that focused specifically on the influence of TikTok on the neurological issue, Tics. I wonder if that the social media applications, Instagram and Youtube would have the same influence. Instagram has a video section and youtube has youtube shorts. Both have similar video capabilities and encourage dancing short clips to songs.
I found another 2021 research article that focused on Tics and Tiktok. The study observed 6 teenage girl with the average age of 14.2 years. They concluded that social media is contributing the the spread of neurological disorders (Hull & Parnes, 2021). There needs to be more research that focuses on the development of neurological disorders secondary to increase social media use. I was unable to locate more research articles that focused on that topic. Thank you for bring awareness to this topic!
Hull, M., & Parnes, M. (2021). Tics and TikTok: Functional Tics Spread Through Social Media. Movement disorders clinical practice, 8(8), 1248–1252. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1002/mdc3.13267