The CBC apparently spun the giant wheel of what to blame social media for today and landed on ADHD being over diagnosed.
It’s no secret mainstream media generally spends their days dreaming up new ways of blaming social media for pretty much everything. Last month, the CBC made not one but two attempts to blame social media for human smuggling. At the time, this was just adding to the growing list of ways mainstream media has blamed social media for everything while citing little to no evidence. Of course, at the time, the two attempts laid bare the tactic of expert shopping where the organization went through experts to find the one that would agree with them (as opposed to being professional journalists and just listening to the experts to find answers).
Well, it seems as though the CBC has figured out how to vet their experts so that they would only get ones that would agree with their own personal world views. This is because, yesterday, the CBC only needed one attempt for their latest hit piece. This month, the CBC decided to blame social media for the over diagnosis of ADHD. Yup, you heard that right, if social media didn’t exist, we either wouldn’t have ADHD or we wouldn’t have the problems associated with the over diagnosis of ADHD. This time, we were able to track down the video of the hit piece, so you can watch the insanity that was put on display.
In the event that the video gets taken down for obvious violations of journalistic standards, the segment starts off with the anchor saying that if you look just about everywhere on social media these days, you’ll see people who post up about how people are talking about having ADHD or thinking that they might have it. Obviously, this is a gross exaggeration because that simply isn’t true. Still, this is a hit piece, not a story based on reality, so the lead was crafted to convince rather than to inform.
Shortly after a clip with someone talking about how people are coming in who are more educated about ADHD (which, you would actually think is a good thing), the reporter says that experts are worried about over diagnosis of the ADHD and that could lead to “serious consequences”. This, of course, implies that this is a major threat to you personally. The thing is, they walk that back later on in the story and suggested it has more to do with strained resources in the medical profession. So, we got the scare part of the story early on.
After introducing her guest, the anchor admitted that people who talk about ADHD aren’t just on social media, but in the physical world thinking about whether or not they have ADHD. This briefly touches on a more realistic scenario where people do talk about ADHD outside of social media. Indeed, there are plenty of sources talking about the disorder. This might include school, work, where you hang out with friends and, well, pretty much everywhere. This ultimately brings into question on why the CBC even slapped “social media” into the story in the first place. Instead, you’d think they would just be talking about the disorder more generally. Unfortunately, the CBC is trying to find ways to blame social media for everything and it is really obvious that the producers are trying to slide “blame social media” into every possible part of their regular news casts.
When the anchor asks the “expert” on what he makes of it, he suggests that one possibility is that because people are using social media, more people are getting ADHD. This, of course, doesn’t really track with the research which says that social media does not cause ADHD. At most, prolonged use might make symptoms last longer. This suggests that ADHD would be an underlying condition in the first place as opposed to people using social media and getting ADHD because of it. That’s a very big difference in the grand scheme of things. It’s kind of astonishing that someone, described as an “expert” would make that assertion. One would hope that this was just a slip on his part.
The expert then raised a second possibility (this is the most likely reality) is that there is an increase awareness of this and more people will raise these issues with their doctors. At this point, ADHD is something a lot of people know about. As far as I can tell, ADHD is, at the very least, something most people I see are aware of. Whether they know all the intricacies surrounding the disorder is another thing, but they are at least aware that this exists.
From there, the expert went back off the rails again where he suggested a third possibility where social media is causing over diagnosis. He cited tests people can take and how if you score above a certain score, then you apparently have ADHD. This, of course, implies that, for one, the testing is done by the social media platform and, two, that they said that the tests are definitive. They never mention what tests they are talking about nor do they say if they have any warnings saying to consult with a doctor.
So, we did our own research into this to try and find these “tests”. On Facebook, we found this account and this account. One thing that jumps out right away is the fact that these are not produced by the platforms themselves. Instead, these are produced by third parties. This is not a surprise because I wasn’t aware that platforms even have tests.
With respect to the first account we found, the warning label is right at the top of the page:
Get Immediate OBJECTIVE RESULTS for your Dr!
With respect to both accounts, however, there is very little user interactivity with the first account struggling to get maybe one or two likes. The latter account doesn’t even have that. So, the visibility is clearly extremely low on the platform. Hardly prevalent as the CBC suggests.
OK, so maybe that was just one platform. Let’s try Twitter. After sifting through several dead accounts, we did find one active account that claims to offer ADHD tests. The problem? It barely gets a single interaction. I think I saw one post that got two likes along with a whole pile of posts that got nothing. Still, even just a cursory look at the posts and I would have serious doubts that anything about it is legitimate.
We tried looking for these on Instagram as well and only found either dead accounts, accounts with little interactivity, or obvious products you should steer clear from (again, with little interactivity).
Obviously, we could try other platforms, but in all likelihood, we’ll generally get the same results.
The only other possibility I can think of is if these supposed “tests” are cropping up in ads. Unfortunately, this is not something I can really replicate at all because they would likely be micro-targeted at an audience that I’m not a part of.
This could have been an opportunity to showcase basic tech literacy. Things like not taking medical advice from the internet would have been a very good piece of advice to have given out, but that was not really a thing during the interview.
At any rate, this puts further doubt into the claims that these tests, and the discussion surrounding ADHD, is extremely wide spread. In looking at these accounts, I would have expected at least hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of comments and likes. That would strike me as the bare minimum for someone like me to say, “OK, maybe there is a problem.” The thing is, that’s not what I found. Not even close, even. This leads me to wonder if this aspect of the story was even researched. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised that this idea was just based off of some random persons assumption and just treated as fact. If so, then I would count that towards yet another journalistic failure on the part of the CBC.
The anchor then went on to say that if you take one of these tests, it’s hard to say if those results are accurate. She cited whether or not you are tired or have been using social media a lot that day as a probable cause. This would be, at the very least, a reasonable observation had it not been for the fact that it was based off of a mountain of assumptions along the way (many of which we couldn’t replicate).
The interview went on to conclude with the anchor saying that maybe you shouldn’t take the online quiz and go see a doctor. Had she not mentioned how the dangers in all of this were the fact that resources on this are already stretched thin, this might have been one of the most reasonable parts in the whole interview. Instead, the mixture of “resources are thin” and “go see a doctor” are conflicting messages. If anything, that might cause some people to hesitate to see a doctor because if resources are stretched thin, then maybe it’s bad to see a doctor. Someone might reasonably assume that if those resources are thin, then maybe seeing a doctor would be bad and choose not to. Why the reporter did this, I don’t really know, but I don’t see what she did at the end as being helpful in any way.
This whole segment, in my view, was a massive train wreck. You could see the very palpable desperation to blame social media for both ADHD and over diagnosis of ADHD. As a result, the segment contains a considerable amount of misinformation and disinformation on top of it all. They claimed that ADHD tests are all over social media. We were unable to replicate those findings. They claimed that social media causes ADHD. We found research that said otherwise. Even worse, they ended on the mixed messages of “resources are stretched thin” and “go see a doctor”. I consider that a dangerous set of mixed signals because it might actually discourage people from actually seeing a doctor when seeing a doctor would actually be the proper medical advice.
I wish I could say that this was a one off incident, but I can’t because I’ve seen this play out many times over. Mainstream media publishing misinformation and disinformation has become extremely commonplace – especially when it comes to topics surrounding technology and digital rights. The result is that people are less trusting of the mainstream media.
In fact, for over a year now, there has been a series of surveys where trust in the media has eroded. There was the Gallup poll I mentioned just the other day where trust in American media continues to hit all time lows. This after another survey showing the same thing earlier this year along with a survey from last year pointing to a collapse in trust in the media.
Throughout all of this, I keep going back to what these outlets are publishing. Every time, I am unsurprisingly finding garbage piece after garbage piece. What I referenced today is just the latest example of the low quality garbage that the mainstream media pumps out on a fairly regular basis. In this case, I found some of what was aired to be dangerous because if someone out there decides that they shouldn’t see a doctor over fears of using already stretched thin resources, while having an actual legitimate reason to go see a doctor, that’s someone’s life that could be at risk.
What is disappointing in all of this is the fact that the CBC, as a result, missed an opportunity to have a serious and actually informative piece on ADHD. Instead, that opportunity was wasted because the organization has a massive hate boner for social media and is desperately trying to blame social media for everything. I would have liked to have seen the focus be on ADHD itself, talking about the importance of seeing a doctor, and yes, mention on the side to not consult the internet for medical advice and see a doctor. When you already have an expert on hand to talk to, that is not particularly difficult to do.
If anything, I’d like to see this story on the CBC get retracted for obvious errors. I doubt that will happen. Still, if you were wondering if there was another reason to distrust the media, you can throw this incident onto the pile.
