October 22, 2021 • 11 mins
A recent phenomena has been turning up in doctors’ offices where teen girls are exhibiting sudden and severe physical tics. After digging into it, many of the girls had one thing in common, they are were watching Tourette syndrome TikTok videos. Most of these teens had also previously been diagnosed with anxiety or depression, but girls with tics are rare and these teens had a high number of them and in some cases the same tic, such as saying the word ‘beans.’ Julie Jargon, family and tech columnist at the WSJ, joins us for how these tics were developing because of social media.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday October. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. A
recent phenomena has been turning up in doctor's offices where
teen girls are exhibiting sudden and severe physical ticks. After
digging into it, many of the girls had one thing
in common. They were watching Tourette syndrome TikTok videos. Most
(00:22):
of these teams had also previously been diagnosed with anxiety
or depression, but girls with ticks are rare, and these
teams had a high number of them, and in some
cases the same tick, such as saying the word beans.
Julie Jargon, family and tech columnists at The Wall Street
Journal joins us for how these ticks were developing because
of social media. Thanks for joining us, Julie, Thank you
(00:43):
for having me. Glad you could join us for this
really interesting story. We're seeing teen girls are starting to
develop turette like ticks, and doctors say that social media,
specifically TikTok, could be a factor. Now, to be clear,
this isn't an epidemic, This isn't happening on a on
a grand scale, but any time we noticed certain changes
(01:04):
in behaviors pop up like this, it could be a
little concerning, So Julie, help us walk through some of this.
What are we seeing. In the last several months, doctors
across the country and doctors in other countries began noticing
that a lot of teenage girls were showing up at
their offices with various movement disorders verbal ticks, physical bodily
(01:25):
movement that they couldn't control. And the reason doctors found
this to be unusual was because it's fairly rare to
see girls with ticks. Oftentimes. One of the most well
known movement disorders, Tourette syndrome, tempts to affect boys and
far greater numbers than girls, and it develops gradually over time,
starting from early childhood. There might be some mild ticks
(01:48):
and it can kind of grow from there. But this
was something that was seeming to happen almost overnight. Girls
were just developing ticks suddenly as teenagers, and their parents
didn't know what was going on, and so they were
bringing them in to see a specialists to you know,
study movement disorders, and who found this to be highly
(02:08):
unusual situation. So we're seeing hospitals in the US, Canada,
Australia and the UK discover some of these uh things.
And we're you know, talking about numbers as you mentioned,
smaller numbers, but right we're seeing uh. I guess in
Texas there was a sixty teens that came in with
you know, ticks like this, whereas a year or two
(02:28):
before that it was only one or two cases that
they had been seeing, so there was a noticeable increase.
And also, you know, to qualify all of this too,
you know, some of these team girls are had been
previously diagnosed with anxiety or depression things like that, so
it's not like just out of the note, out of
the blue, somebody is developing these things. They are people
(02:50):
teams that have other issues as well, right, And some
of the doctors I spoke to said that people that
have some underlying mental health issues, specifically anxiety and depression,
and might be more prone to developing these kind of ticks.
That's just a similarity that they noticed across the board.
What really struck them though, was how similar their patients
ticks were to the ticks they were seeing in other patients,
(03:12):
both in their own practices and at other hospitals where
they were conferring with other doctors, and they started to
you know, question their patients, you know, okay, as they're
taking their history. Some of the patients offered that they
had been watching TikTok videos of people displaying ticks recently
before their ticks started showing up, and doctors and noticed
(03:34):
that a lot of girls were showing up saying the
word beans. And they discovered that they're a popular TikTok
influencer who says she has to rest and she says
the word beans, so, you know, an unusual specific word
that a lot of these girls across the country and
in other countries were saying. So that's when they started
to look into TikTok specifically and found that there are
(03:57):
lots of lots of videos with you know, now billions
of views of TikTokers to exhibit the same types of
ticks that they were then seeing in their patients. TikTok
is a very interesting place. I myself have gone down
many rabbit holes, you know, looking at the app and
it's endless, endless videos, right, and I actually have seen
many of these turette tick videos from some of these people,
(04:19):
some of these girls, right specifically, I have seen the
videos of the influencer who says beans because they it was,
you know, such a weird word to say, right, But
they're fascinating seeing people with the ticks, seeing how they react.
A lot of them are talking about how they just
cope with everyday life. But to your point, videos containing
the hashtag turette's had about one point to five billion
(04:41):
views in the report, but this number had grown down
to four point eight billion views. So there's a ton
of videos out there like this, a lot of videos.
And as you noted, you don't just watch one video
on TikTok, It's just a constant stream of videos. And
so a lot of these girls were just watching one
video after another after another after another, and you know,
(05:02):
apparently it had or at least played into them developing
these ticks and play the role. And in this situation happening,
there are some that are casting doubt on this, maybe
casting out even on these influencers that are saying they
have turets in their in their videos, and uh, researchers
and and experts do say it is possible to unlearn
(05:23):
some of these ticks. That's right. Some of the doctors
I spoke with who have studied to write syndrome for years.
They studied these videos and they are skeptical about whether
some of the people in these videos have the diagnoses
that they're saying they have, just because it doesn't look
like what they've typically seen to looking like to them.
So what doctors are doing now is they are suggesting
(05:45):
that their patients receives cognitive behavioral therapy, learning techniques that
will help them identify the triggers that cause um an
episode of ticks to happen, different stressors that might set
that off, and learning coping mechanism to try to control it.
They say that it is something you can learn not
to do, but it takes practice and some careful therapy
(06:07):
to get there. Let's talk about a specific example, because
you did profile a girl named Kayla Johansson. She's a
seventeen year old high school senior in Texas and she
also she as we mentioned before, she had some other
issues beforehand, but she started suddenly developing some of these
ticks and obviously her parents were concerned. They got her
checked out, and TikTok was one of the things. She
(06:30):
admitted she had been watching a lot of these videos
right and She said she didn't think about it at
a time. That initially she actually was looking for some
videos of people who have a d h D like
she has been diagnosed as having. She was struggling, like
so many students during the pandemic with remote school um
and particularly staying organized and time management. So she's looking
(06:52):
for some videos of other students with a d h
D d C whether they had developed any coping strategies
for getting through remote school. And she came up cross
these TikTok compilation videos of people with ticks and watched
a lot of those and like she like, She said,
she didn't think about there being a connection between her ticks.
That developed after that and watching those videos. Wasn't until
(07:13):
she saw a specialist who started asking her about her
social media use that she kind of pieced it together.
Now there's a couple of interesting I mean, this whole
topic is very interesting. Obviously. You know, doctors are saying,
no one's going to develop these ticks, you know, watching
a couple of videos. I mean, this has to be
borne out over a longer period of time. There have
been people that looked into, uh, you know, other clusters
(07:37):
of these tick like disorders. Mass psychogenic illness things. I mean,
they could be related, but you know, these are all
kind of just other avenues that people are exploring when
it comes to this, right, I mean, there could be
a lot of different things at play here, but the
TikTok video watching was something that definitely came up in
a lot of these cases, enough of them that it
prompted several researchers across the world to write research papers
(08:01):
and they're still studying this and to learning more about it.
And like you said, there have been cases in the
past where clusters of people, oftentimes girls in different communities
developed ticks and other types of similar behaviors after seeing
friends of theirs, including those, and those were always confined
to a certain geographic region. But now with social media
(08:23):
and TikTok, you know, being so big, they're just hit over.
You know, a billion monthly users, people all over the
world can now access the same thing, and this kind
of mass sort of tradition can be spread in a
whole new way and you know, a billion users and
it is quickly becoming the app of choice for teen
(08:44):
girls in this in this age range. You know, one
of the big questions, right, and to reiterate again, you
know this isn't happening on a huge mass scale, but
just enough to start sparking some interest in all this.
What do parents do if they notice, you know, your
your team is coming down with some of these is obviously,
take a break from the social media, ask if they're
looking at certain of these videos, and try not to
(09:05):
get angry over the fact of this. I mean, this
is a lot of heavy things to deal with if
something starts to develop like this, right, and uh, you
know these doctors that I spoke to, they said, early
intervention and the right diagnosis can help with all these
ticks sooner. And the Tourette Association of America maintains a
list on their website of different hospitals and treatment centers
(09:25):
that they consider to be centrals of excellence for treating ticks,
and so that's the place to go to find a specialists.
I mean, has battle always with anything helps related is
getting the right diagnosis so you can get on a
proper course of treatment. And in the meantime, doctors say
it's really important for kids to maintain a normal routine.
Some doctors said that with a return to school, they
saw an increase in these cases this fall, and so
(09:48):
anytime the normal routine and changes that can cause stress,
which can bring on greater ticks like behavior. So if
the kid is at school and they start to have
ticks and if destructive and embarrassing, it's actually not a
good idea to go home and then you know, come
back the next day. It's better to stay in school,
maybe go to the nurses office for a little while
and you know, kind of let the moment pass and
(10:11):
then return to the classroom, because anytime you transition back
and forth, it can actually make the problem worse. As
I mentioned, just a fascinating story. Really, and you know
they think, obviously this is could be modeled behavior. Why
they why they're learning it or or picking these things up.
But it's just amplified because of social media and and
you know TikTok on this video platform where you can
(10:32):
readily see so many videos just interesting, interesting stuff. Julie Jargon,
family and tech calumnists at the Wall Street Journal, thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
I'm Oscar Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't
forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check
me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
(10:53):
so follow us on iHeart Radio or wherever you get
your podcast
It's Friday October. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. A
recent phenomena has been turning up in doctor's offices where
teen girls are exhibiting sudden and severe physical ticks. After
digging into it, many of the girls had one thing
in common. They were watching Tourette syndrome TikTok videos. Most
(00:22):
of these teams had also previously been diagnosed with anxiety
or depression, but girls with ticks are rare, and these
teams had a high number of them, and in some
cases the same tick, such as saying the word beans.
Julie Jargon, family and tech columnists at The Wall Street
Journal joins us for how these ticks were developing because
of social media. Thanks for joining us, Julie, Thank you
(00:43):
for having me. Glad you could join us for this
really interesting story. We're seeing teen girls are starting to
develop turette like ticks, and doctors say that social media,
specifically TikTok, could be a factor. Now, to be clear,
this isn't an epidemic, This isn't happening on a on
a grand scale, but any time we noticed certain changes
(01:04):
in behaviors pop up like this, it could be a
little concerning, So Julie, help us walk through some of this.
What are we seeing. In the last several months, doctors
across the country and doctors in other countries began noticing
that a lot of teenage girls were showing up at
their offices with various movement disorders verbal ticks, physical bodily
(01:25):
movement that they couldn't control. And the reason doctors found
this to be unusual was because it's fairly rare to
see girls with ticks. Oftentimes. One of the most well
known movement disorders, Tourette syndrome, tempts to affect boys and
far greater numbers than girls, and it develops gradually over time,
starting from early childhood. There might be some mild ticks
(01:48):
and it can kind of grow from there. But this
was something that was seeming to happen almost overnight. Girls
were just developing ticks suddenly as teenagers, and their parents
didn't know what was going on, and so they were
bringing them in to see a specialists to you know,
study movement disorders, and who found this to be highly
(02:08):
unusual situation. So we're seeing hospitals in the US, Canada,
Australia and the UK discover some of these uh things.
And we're you know, talking about numbers as you mentioned,
smaller numbers, but right we're seeing uh. I guess in
Texas there was a sixty teens that came in with
you know, ticks like this, whereas a year or two
(02:28):
before that it was only one or two cases that
they had been seeing, so there was a noticeable increase.
And also, you know, to qualify all of this too,
you know, some of these team girls are had been
previously diagnosed with anxiety or depression things like that, so
it's not like just out of the note, out of
the blue, somebody is developing these things. They are people
(02:50):
teams that have other issues as well, right, And some
of the doctors I spoke to said that people that
have some underlying mental health issues, specifically anxiety and depression,
and might be more prone to developing these kind of ticks.
That's just a similarity that they noticed across the board.
What really struck them though, was how similar their patients
ticks were to the ticks they were seeing in other patients,
(03:12):
both in their own practices and at other hospitals where
they were conferring with other doctors, and they started to
you know, question their patients, you know, okay, as they're
taking their history. Some of the patients offered that they
had been watching TikTok videos of people displaying ticks recently
before their ticks started showing up, and doctors and noticed
(03:34):
that a lot of girls were showing up saying the
word beans. And they discovered that they're a popular TikTok
influencer who says she has to rest and she says
the word beans, so, you know, an unusual specific word
that a lot of these girls across the country and
in other countries were saying. So that's when they started
to look into TikTok specifically and found that there are
(03:57):
lots of lots of videos with you know, now billions
of views of TikTokers to exhibit the same types of
ticks that they were then seeing in their patients. TikTok
is a very interesting place. I myself have gone down
many rabbit holes, you know, looking at the app and
it's endless, endless videos, right, and I actually have seen
many of these turette tick videos from some of these people,
(04:19):
some of these girls, right specifically, I have seen the
videos of the influencer who says beans because they it was,
you know, such a weird word to say, right, But
they're fascinating seeing people with the ticks, seeing how they react.
A lot of them are talking about how they just
cope with everyday life. But to your point, videos containing
the hashtag turette's had about one point to five billion
(04:41):
views in the report, but this number had grown down
to four point eight billion views. So there's a ton
of videos out there like this, a lot of videos.
And as you noted, you don't just watch one video
on TikTok, It's just a constant stream of videos. And
so a lot of these girls were just watching one
video after another after another after another, and you know,
(05:02):
apparently it had or at least played into them developing
these ticks and play the role. And in this situation happening,
there are some that are casting doubt on this, maybe
casting out even on these influencers that are saying they
have turets in their in their videos, and uh, researchers
and and experts do say it is possible to unlearn
(05:23):
some of these ticks. That's right. Some of the doctors
I spoke with who have studied to write syndrome for years.
They studied these videos and they are skeptical about whether
some of the people in these videos have the diagnoses
that they're saying they have, just because it doesn't look
like what they've typically seen to looking like to them.
So what doctors are doing now is they are suggesting
(05:45):
that their patients receives cognitive behavioral therapy, learning techniques that
will help them identify the triggers that cause um an
episode of ticks to happen, different stressors that might set
that off, and learning coping mechanism to try to control it.
They say that it is something you can learn not
to do, but it takes practice and some careful therapy
(06:07):
to get there. Let's talk about a specific example, because
you did profile a girl named Kayla Johansson. She's a
seventeen year old high school senior in Texas and she
also she as we mentioned before, she had some other
issues beforehand, but she started suddenly developing some of these
ticks and obviously her parents were concerned. They got her
checked out, and TikTok was one of the things. She
(06:30):
admitted she had been watching a lot of these videos
right and She said she didn't think about it at
a time. That initially she actually was looking for some
videos of people who have a d h D like
she has been diagnosed as having. She was struggling, like
so many students during the pandemic with remote school um
and particularly staying organized and time management. So she's looking
(06:52):
for some videos of other students with a d h
D d C whether they had developed any coping strategies
for getting through remote school. And she came up cross
these TikTok compilation videos of people with ticks and watched
a lot of those and like she like, She said,
she didn't think about there being a connection between her ticks.
That developed after that and watching those videos. Wasn't until
(07:13):
she saw a specialist who started asking her about her
social media use that she kind of pieced it together.
Now there's a couple of interesting I mean, this whole
topic is very interesting. Obviously. You know, doctors are saying,
no one's going to develop these ticks, you know, watching
a couple of videos. I mean, this has to be
borne out over a longer period of time. There have
been people that looked into, uh, you know, other clusters
(07:37):
of these tick like disorders. Mass psychogenic illness things. I mean,
they could be related, but you know, these are all
kind of just other avenues that people are exploring when
it comes to this, right, I mean, there could be
a lot of different things at play here, but the
TikTok video watching was something that definitely came up in
a lot of these cases, enough of them that it
prompted several researchers across the world to write research papers
(08:01):
and they're still studying this and to learning more about it.
And like you said, there have been cases in the
past where clusters of people, oftentimes girls in different communities
developed ticks and other types of similar behaviors after seeing
friends of theirs, including those, and those were always confined
to a certain geographic region. But now with social media
(08:23):
and TikTok, you know, being so big, they're just hit over.
You know, a billion monthly users, people all over the
world can now access the same thing, and this kind
of mass sort of tradition can be spread in a
whole new way and you know, a billion users and
it is quickly becoming the app of choice for teen
(08:44):
girls in this in this age range. You know, one
of the big questions, right, and to reiterate again, you
know this isn't happening on a huge mass scale, but
just enough to start sparking some interest in all this.
What do parents do if they notice, you know, your
your team is coming down with some of these is obviously,
take a break from the social media, ask if they're
looking at certain of these videos, and try not to
(09:05):
get angry over the fact of this. I mean, this
is a lot of heavy things to deal with if
something starts to develop like this, right, and uh, you
know these doctors that I spoke to, they said, early
intervention and the right diagnosis can help with all these
ticks sooner. And the Tourette Association of America maintains a
list on their website of different hospitals and treatment centers
(09:25):
that they consider to be centrals of excellence for treating ticks,
and so that's the place to go to find a specialists.
I mean, has battle always with anything helps related is
getting the right diagnosis so you can get on a
proper course of treatment. And in the meantime, doctors say
it's really important for kids to maintain a normal routine.
Some doctors said that with a return to school, they
saw an increase in these cases this fall, and so
(09:48):
anytime the normal routine and changes that can cause stress,
which can bring on greater ticks like behavior. So if
the kid is at school and they start to have
ticks and if destructive and embarrassing, it's actually not a
good idea to go home and then you know, come
back the next day. It's better to stay in school,
maybe go to the nurses office for a little while
and you know, kind of let the moment pass and
(10:11):
then return to the classroom, because anytime you transition back
and forth, it can actually make the problem worse. As
I mentioned, just a fascinating story. Really, and you know
they think, obviously this is could be modeled behavior. Why
they why they're learning it or or picking these things up.
But it's just amplified because of social media and and
you know TikTok on this video platform where you can
(10:32):
readily see so many videos just interesting, interesting stuff. Julie Jargon,
family and tech calumnists at the Wall Street Journal, thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
I'm Oscar Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't
forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check
me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
(10:53):
so follow us on iHeart Radio or wherever you get
your podcast
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