TikTok is giving our children Tourette’s

Shortly after the first Covid lockdown ended, doctors began to notice something so strange that at first they struggled to explain it. There appeared to be a sudden rise in the number of children being referred with Tourette’s syndrome.

Tourette’s is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by repetitive, involuntary movements or sounds called ‘tics’. While mild tics are relatively common in children, specialists suddenly started seeing large numbers of children displaying complex and debilitating symptoms. Dr Alasdair Parker, president of the British Paediatric Neurology Association, said in 2021: ‘The most severe tics disorders I have seen over the past 20 years have all presented in the last five months to my practice.’ Specialists were using the word ‘explosion’ to describe the numbers they were seeing. There were reports of adolescent psychiatry units that would expect to see four or five new cases a year recording that number in a week.

Even stranger, although Tourette’s is usually more common in boys, young girls accounted for most new cases. A paper published in the Lancet earlier this year found a more than fourfold increase in the disorder among young women. This bizarre phenomenon suggested that something was happening that wasn’t following the usual pattern – that wasn’t purely neurological.

It became apparent that the Covid lockdowns had created a perfect storm. The exact cause of severe tic disorders like Tourette’s has long been debated. It is likely that there are genetic factors and parts of the brain controlling movement are involved, but undoubtedly stress, anxiety and depression play a role. What doctors uncovered was that for several years before the pandemic an online community had been growing where those with Tourette’s had been posting videos of their tic attacks as a form of support for one another.