"It starts on TikTok": Looping Effects and The Impact of Social Media on Psychiatric Terms

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of TikTok on the public's understanding and engagement with psychiatric and psychological concepts. The rise of mental health-related content on social media has been linked to an increase in adults seeking a diagnosis of ADHD (Yeung et al., 2022). By reviewing a case study: the revision of the term "object permanence" from a developmental stage to an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptom, I argue that a looping effect, modeled after Hacking (1999), can explain the pattern of language revision for psychological terms on TikTok. Interviews with TikTok users provide preliminary evidence for this looping effect and the research is contextualized within the broader psychiatric discourse.