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Bad Influence argues that separating medical fact from fiction is becoming harder online.
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Separating medical fact from fiction is becoming harder online amid a booming industry of health influencers, says the writer.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The doctors had never seen anything like it. During Covid-19 lockdowns teenage girls across the world began jumping, hitting and shouting insults and non-sequiturs such as “beans” and “beetroot”. Some were rushed to emergency rooms; neurologists called it a “pandemic within a pandemic”. Parents suspected Tourette syndrome, which can manifest as repeated twitches.
But it turned out these were not ordinary tics: They were TikTok tics.


