Can social media spread tics in teens?

A strange new trend has been reported by psychiatrics around the world: an increase recently in the number of teenagers with new tic-like behaviours. This has become particularly marked since the pandemic kicked off, and it coincides with a surge in social media and online video consumption. So scientists suspect that some people susceptible to tic conditions, like Tourette's, when exposed to videos of others with tics, can develop them themselves. Julia Ravey reports...

Julia - I'm just on TikTok and I'm looking up the # for Tourette’s. #Tourette’s has 5.5 billion views. Some of the top videos are an individual with Tourette’s, trying to do a COVID test. An individual, trying to drink a Coke. There's also a video here of a young girl with these jerk-like motor movements, who's asking, “Why is this happening to me?” This looks like an individual who has recently developed tic-like behaviours. There's no doubt that these videos are raising awareness of what it is like to live with tic-like behaviours, but are they having an impact beyond that? Jessica Frey from the University of Florida told me what they've been seeing in their clinics over the past year or so.

Jessica - Increased onset of tic-like behaviour and there is a concern that there is some social media influence involved in the onset of some of these tic-like disorders. One of the things we're seeing is a lot of the patients that come to us with these new onset tics, they're mimicking a lot of well known social media influencers. They have the same exact or very similar tics to the ones that they've seen in the videos.

Julia - That have been historical incidences of functional conditions spreading through populations.

Jessica - There was something called 'mass hysteria' where one person got some sort of thing and then everyone in the school got the same type of thing. That's on a much grander scale now with social media use because it's everywhere like viral content going worldwide.

Julia - Being exposed to this content with viral videos of tic-like behaviours could influence those who already have tic-like conditions or are susceptible to them.

Jessica - The tricky part of course, is that people who have Tourette syndrome or organic tics have a very common manifestation if they see people with tics that can actually be a trigger for their own tics and make them tic more.

Julia - Since the pandemic, with more teens being isolated and online, the occurrence of people coming across tic-like behaviour videos has no doubt increased, which could be a good or a bad thing. Jessica and colleagues are now trying to understand if social media is impacting tic-like behaviours, and have started with a small study, looking at the link between social media usage and tic severity.

Jessica - We did see some correlative data between the social media use as well as tic severity. There was no correlation between social media use and tic frequency. What was particularly interesting was only 5% of participants actually reported using social media to look up things related to tics and Tourette syndrome.

Julia - This was a surprise.

Jessica - Because our hypothesis going into this was that if you're going to be watching more videos on social media related to tics and Tourette syndrome, that may generate more severe or more frequent tics. We did see a correlation, but don't really have an explanation for the causation quite yet.

Julia - These results can be hard to untangle given that stress is a known influencer of increased tic-like behaviour.

Jessica - Given the pandemic and the increased social media use, which one is it? Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Is it the anxiety's driving the tics? Is it the social media use? Is it the pandemic? Is it one of those causing the other? We don't really know.

Julia - While larger studies go on to unpick this, Jessica and others have seen one technique, which has been found to help reduce tic-like behaviours in some instances.

Jessica - Anecdotally, we've seen that if we educate patients about where they're getting their information from and they stop and reduce their social media use, a lot of times the tics get better.