As government scrutiny and even some statewide TikTok bans trickle in, concerns about the app’s impact on youth mental health are often repeated. Among the concerned are the bereft parents of a teen who killed himself last year, reportedly after seeing self-harm content on TikTok.
While states and some organizations decide whether TikTok poses enough danger to warrant a ban, I want to sound the alarm about an online mental health risk that’s even more chronic and not limited to TikTok: an epidemic of self-diagnosis, fueled by social media, that’s leading to improper treatment, missed treatment and the trivialization of serious mental health conditions.
If there’s a silver lining to the COVID-era mental health crisis, it’s that people seem more willing than ever to talk about mental health struggles with friends, with colleagues and sometimes to the whole world online. Even better, they’re willing to get help. The percentage of adults aged 18 to 44 seeking mental health treatment rose significantly during the first years of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If you spend any time online, you can’t miss the new candor about mental health conditions. TikTok and Instagram influencers share their struggles and diagnoses on camera. In recent years, executives on LinkedIn have shared photos of antidepressant medication with the hashtag #PostYourPill. Actor-singer-beauty mogul Selena Gomez launched an entire content platform focused on “mental fitness.” Conditions such as anxiety disorder, ADHD and OCD are not only being de-stigmatized, in some contexts, they’re trending.
Open discussion of mental health is undoubtedly a good thing when it eradicates shame, results in people feeling less alone or motivates somebody to seek needed professional care. But in this new era of openness, we risk oversimplification and even trivialization of complex medical conditions, increasing the risk of overtreatment for some, undertreatment for others and overall mistreatment of people exposed to a cacophony of mental health conversations online but lacking access to balanced, authoritative information and quality clinical care.
Let’s say a young woman perusing TikTok sees an influencer sharing that he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, then – thanks to social media algorithms – over the next week, more ADHD-related content appears in the young woman’s feed. Some of the symptoms feel relatable, so she does a YouTube search on ADHD. After watching a few of the thousands of videos on the topic, she decides that she herself has ADHD.
This is not unusual. Some therapists at Talkspace, where I serve as the chief medical officer, report they have clients coming to sessions with more complex or specific self-diagnoses. Whereas a client might have said, “I think I’m depressed,” a few years ago, now more are saying, “I think I have borderline personality disorder” or “I think I’m on the autism spectrum.”
Such self-diagnosis can be dangerous. When a social media user becomes convinced that they have a mental health disorder, it can lead them to seek inappropriate treatments. They may announce their self-diagnosis to a primary care provider who doesn’t have sufficient mental health expertise to appropriately evaluate the presenting symptoms. Or the patient may wind up using a telehealth provider to get a prescription medication that’s not helpful or is dangerous. In the case of the hypothetical young woman above, she’d likely be seeing ads for ADHD-focused telehealth prescribers within days, if not minutes, of initially engaging with ADHD influencers.
Diagnosing a mental health disorder isn’t as simple as checking off a list of symptoms. Many healthy people experience symptoms of a mental health condition, but the true measure of whether those symptoms merit a diagnosis and treatment is whether they impair the individual’s ability to function. That determination requires working with a licensed mental health professional to evaluate the frequency, intensity, severity and specificity of those symptoms, and understand them within the broader context of life events, stressors and family history.
A “reel” diagnosis needs a real-life one
To address the “TikTok effect” and stop the dangers of self-diagnosis, mental health professionals must meet people where they are: online and actively searching for answers, inadvertently creating a curated feed.
Social media companies and other platforms with user-generated content have a responsibility to create guardrails that ensure clinically-vetted and accurate information is within reach of anybody seeking content about mental health conditions.
For example, if you enter the search terms “depression” or “suicide” into Instagram, you’re offered a list of mental health resources. However, searches related to specific conditions like OCD, ADHD and Tourette’s link directly to memes and user-generated videos of (to put it generously) mixed quality. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen how quickly social platforms could flag content related to COVID or vaccines and direct people to CDC information on those topics. Therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to expect the same for content around sensitive mental health topics.
When somebody hears about a condition online and believes, correctly or not, that it affects them, they are more likely to feel worried, triggered or even distraught. Thankfully, that same technology can quickly link them with mental health care without stigma or stress and allow them to find real answers under a professional’s guidance – if they land at a responsible, high-quality source of tele-mental health. We recently revamped our own site to provide clinical insights from a dedicated team of licensed, practicing clinicians to add dimension to the spectrum between experiencing symptoms and having a condition.
Unfortunately, some telehealth services are all too quick to prescribe medications, including controlled substances, based solely on answers to online questions. At Talkspace, I am personally committed to our policy of not prescribing controlled substances online. When our board-certified psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners do prescribe medication, it is only after live video consultations and a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation.
Because mental health conditions are so much more complex than what can be captured by a checklist of symptoms, I’m wary of any company that prescribes without live consultations. When digital health companies feed into the misconception that everyone with depressive symptoms is clinically depressed or anyone who’s easily distracted has ADHD, they risk hurting more people than they help.
At a time when it’s all too easy for both the worried well and people with serious mental health conditions to self-diagnose online, it’s imperative that both social media and digital health companies do everything possible to direct vulnerable audiences to trustworthy information and comprehensive, ethical care.
B | 这家脱胎于上市公司的企业，已推出无锡本土具身智能品牌，初步搭建起涵盖人形、四足及检测类机器人的产品矩阵。
从排放控制的细分龙头到智能装备的新入局者，凯龙高科的转型路径，为观察传统制造业如何切入新赛道提供了一个去概念化的样本。
C |
凯龙高科开始训练机器人。新京报贝壳财经记者 俞金旻 摄
原有检测设备“装上腿”，机器狗“上岗”采样
凯龙高科的跨界并非凭空而起。作为国内尾气后处理系统的头部企业，其在精密制造、电控系统与系统集成上的积累已超过20年。
“尾气治理涉及的高精度传感器、闭环电控逻辑以及多部件系统集成，与机器人的环境感知、运动控制和整机协同在底层技术上是相通的。”凯龙高科总经理曲阳在接受贝壳财经记者采访时表示。
D | 基于这一判断，企业将原有技术架构进行了跨行业复用：尾气检测的传感技术转化为机器人的环境感知模组，发动机电控经验迭代为机器人的运动控制单元，既有的供应链与集成能力则支撑了整机开发的效率。
在公司实验室，贝壳财经记者看到一只用于尾气检测的四足机器狗，能够自主靠近排气管完成采样、分析与数据回传。
E | 这类产品的雏形，实质上是将原有检测设备“装上腿”，把存量技术转化为新业务的切入点，避免了完全的从零研发。
F |
当前具身智能赛道不乏炫技式演示，凯奇公司表现出了相对克制的研发逻辑。曲阳坦言，公司目前并不追求单一动作的极致表演，而是聚焦“能否在真实场景中稳定运行”。
贝壳财经记者了解到，该企业目前主要围绕工业与化工巡检、环保检测、消防应急、公共服务四大场景做产品落地。在环保领域，机器人可与检测仪器融合，替代人工进入高危或受限空间；在消防场景，则侧重高温环境下的气体侦察与数据传输。
G | 这种“场景定义产品”的思路，使其技术迭代能够对应到具体的付费方和痛点，降低了产业化落地的不确定性。目前，企业正通过重点行业试点，逐步建设机器人的装配、训练与检测能力。
凯龙高科旗下凯奇具身智能机器人正在训练模拟手，用于未来工业生产。新京报贝壳财经记者 俞金旻 摄
传统制造企业转型，技术能力与真实产业需求对接
凯龙高科这类存量制造企业跨界，恰好印证了这一逻辑：它们不需要另起炉灶，而是把原有的工程化能力和制造底蕴平移到新硬件上，在产业链中找到了自己的位置。
贝壳财经记者在现场亲身体验了具身智能机器人的训练过程，戴上VR眼镜，手持遥控手柄操控训练机器人完成前进、抓取、放置等工作，原本这是一件非常容易的事，但要操控机器人去完成需要不断的练习。
H | 其间，记者失败了很多次，不是物品没夹住就是把标志物撞倒，力度、方向都不好控制。
新京报贝壳财经记者正在体验训练机器人。
在现场，贝壳财经记者采访了多位“蓝领”，“面对这么多的机器人会担心失业吗？”他们的回答很乐观，表示不担心，反而期待它们能够成为人类的帮手。“我们训练它，就是为了未来更好地帮助我们。”
从实验室样机到小批量交付，具身智能仍面临成本、可靠性和商业闭环的考验。
I | 但凯龙高科的案例表明，传统制造企业的智能化转型未必需要宏大的叙事，将既有技术能力与真实产业需求对接，往往是更务实的增长逻辑。当跨界回归到技术与场景本身，所谓的“新质生产力”才具备扎实的落脚点。
而企业转型背后，离不开城市产业生态的支撑。
