ONE of the key milestones in any teenager’s life is discovering digital hypochondria. Here are the first six things they’ll diagnose themselves with:
ADHD
Thank you, random American lady on TikTok, for showing the teens of the world that getting distracted by your phone is enough for a solid self-diagnosis of ADHD. She’s now going to prove it to them by making lots more distracting videos they can watch on their phones.
Dyslexia
They were actually screened for it at school but don’t remember. Luckily Instagram is more reliable than official tests by an educational psychologist, and it turns out that misspelling the odd word is full-blown dyslexia. It’s definitely not the result of reading illiterate shite on the internet all day. How could you be so ignorant about their serious condition?
Lactose intolerance
Stop laughing, take them seriously. They just heard one of their favourite vloggers talking about this and it would make so much sense. Don’t you remember that they felt a bit sick and bloated after they ate that entire tub of ice cream?
Every mental illness
Mental illness is a serious issue among teens, but there are subtle clues that their Facebook diagnosis might be be wrong. These include having every condition from schizophrenia to ostraconophobia simultaneously, and at least two being fictional psychic abilities such as premonitions and telepathy, more usually known to affect groups like the Jedi community.
Anaemia
Your teen read a Twitter thread about how monthly iron loss causes the condition, and they’ve decided it’s affecting them because why else would they be so tired? (A: Playing FIFA at 2am.) Naturally he didn’t read the original thread properly so doesn’t realise it was about periods, but actually that’s just more evidence for his ADHD.
Munchausen by proxy
They may have only got 30 seconds into a YouTube video on this one, but they are already certain that they not only have it, but are dying of it. They haven’t really thought that one through.