TikTok and Neurodivergence: How Social Media Is Changing the Way We See Ourselves
On TikTok, it takes just thirty seconds to hear someone put words to feelings you’ve carried your whole life. A young woman sits in her bedroom, listing habits she once thought were quirks: avoiding eye contact, rehearsing conversations before answering the phone, feeling drained after socializing. Her caption reads: “Late-diagnosed autistic at 32.” In the comments, thousands echo the same thought: “I thought I was just weird—maybe I should get evaluated.”
This is how many adults, especially women, are first encountering the language of autism and ADHD. Once, these conditions were confined to dense clinical manuals and childhood assessments. Now, they arrive as bite-sized videos, shaped by personal stories and amplified by algorithms that notice every flicker of attention. The shift is striking: Google searches for autism in adults, ADHD vs autism, and free autism test for adults have surged, reflecting a wave of self-inquiry sparked not in doctors’ offices but on smartphones.
Social media has democratized knowledge that long felt locked behind academic gatekeeping. For decades, diagnostic frameworks favored certain presentations—primarily in boys, primarily in childhood—and left others unseen. Many women grew up masking their differences, camouflaging behaviors that might have drawn scrutiny. TikTok has cracked that veneer, surfacing stories from people who spent years believing they were simply anxious, shy, or scattered.
The impact is double-edged. On one side is validation: people discovering they are not alone, finally understanding why the world has always felt sharper, louder, harder to navigate. Communities form in comment threads. Resources are shared. Stigma erodes. On the other side is oversimplification: a scrolling checklist can’t distinguish between autism and ADHD—or between neurodivergence and the ordinary frictions of modern life. The platform’s algorithms reinforce the content you pause on, creating echo chambers where every struggle starts to look like a diagnosis.
Clinically, ADHD and autism overlap in ways even professionals find challenging. Both can involve executive function struggles, sensory sensitivities, and a sense of being out of step with social norms. Yet their roots—and the paths to support—are different. Terms like “level 1 autism” or “high-functioning autism” are often misunderstood as measures of intelligence or severity, when in fact they describe the amount of support a person needs day to day.
Many adults reach their first evaluation carrying years of misdiagnoses: anxiety, depression, personality disorders. Others never entered the system at all. Online tools like the Autism-Spectrum Quotient or ADHD self-report scales can offer a starting point, but they are just that: beginnings. A true diagnosis requires a clinician’s time, expertise, and space to explore a person’s history in all its complexity.
If social media has given you words that resonate, pause before embracing them as a final answer. Reflection is powerful—but so is data. Keep a brief log of the traits and situations that stand out to you. Then seek a professional trained in adult assessment to help determine whether your experiences point to ADHD, autism, both, or neither. Whatever the outcome, there are tools and supports—cognitive strategies, workplace accommodations, peer groups—that can make life feel more navigable.
TikTok has opened doors to conversations long overdue. It has given millions the courage to ask questions and see themselves with new clarity. But the most important step happens off-screen, in careful, compassionate dialogue with someone trained to help you find answers.
