Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on teenage girls developing tics, “physical jerking movements and verbal outbursts,” for no obvious reason. 

  “After months of studying the patients,” the author wrote, “experts at top pediatric hospitals … discovered that most of the girls had something in common: TikTok.” 

The idea of medical symptoms caused by social factors drove journalist Suzy Weiss to look into the phenomenon. A key factor, for young women in particular, is all of the attention.  

“Whenever I would post a picture of me looking sad, or with pills in my hand… it would get like 2,000 likes,” one influencer admitted. Pictures of her smiling would, on the other hand, only receive about 100.  

We should never dismiss a real condition, but as one doctor put it, we should always ask, “What can we do to make it better?”  

Jesus said that to get rid of your eye or hand if it offends you, but getting rid of the internet or social media can be even harder to fathom for many of us. Maybe it shouldn’t be.