Teenagers Who Watch These Online Videos Are Developing This Strange Medical Condition

The whole thing seemed to spread like a virus, and German psychologists found themselves at the center of the outbreak. They were suddenly swamped by patients exhibiting the exact same symptoms. It was the start of a true medical mystery.

It wasn’t the first internet phenomenon to spread, of course. Remember cat breading? If you don’t, you’ll almost certainly have heard of the infamous Tide Pod challenge, where folks online dared one another to chew laundry detergent tablets. But while you know Tide Pods are bad for you, you wouldn’t expect watching a simple YouTube video to cause you any harm.

There seemed to be something weird going on with the kids, though, and the professionals narrowed down the source to a specific YouTube channel. Sounds odd, but that didn’t stop them from looking further into the whole phenomenon. Yes, researchers have tried to get to the root of the problem: what the kids were experiencing and why. And what they’ve found is truly fascinating. 

The woman who rang the alarm bell was Kirsten Müller-Vahl, a doctor at Germany’s Hannover Medical School. She’s a practicing psychiatrist, and the first thing that struck her — after the number of sudden admissions, of course — was how her patients behaved. Müller-Vahl had noticed something truly bizarre.

“The symptoms were identical,” Müller-Vahl explained in a September 2021 interview with Wired. “Not only similar but identical.” It was the first time she’d seen something like this in her 25 years on the job. All the patients were experiencing unconscious muscle tics in not just one group of muscles, but a few.

And Müller-Vahl may still be baffled now if it hadn’t been for one of her medical students. She recognized a patient’s tics and reported back to her teacher. It turned out that she’d seen those tics on social media — not something like them, but the exact same ones. So she directed Müller-Vahl to YouTube. 

What Müller-Vahl found there convinced her that further study was needed. It all seemed to be related to a guy named Jan Zimmermann, and his channel “Gewitter im Kopf.” Roughly translated, this means “thunderstorm in the head,” and that’s because Zimmermann uses his account to talk about his experiences of Tourette syndrome.

Zimmermann’s channel offers a candid glimpse into what it’s like to live with Tourette’s, but he tries to keep it lighthearted. In fact, if Gewitter im Kopf’s popularity is anything to go by, he’s raising a great deal of awareness for the condition. Zimmermann currently has more than two million subscribers to the channel.

And Müller-Vahl discovered Zimmermann’s tics. Some of them were verbal, as he regularly repeats the words “pommes,” “Fliegende Haie,” and “Du bist häßlich.” They translate to “fries,” “flying sharks,” and “you are ugly,” respectively. Others were more physical — such as Zimmermann’s compulsion to break eggs. 

Müller-Vahl’s new patients were exhibiting the same behavior. So could they have somehow “caught” Tourette syndrome? That’s the curious thing. You see, Tourette’s is not contagious. And while its origins remain a mystery, experts at least know one crucial thing about the condition.

Basically, Tourette’s may be hereditary. “Genetic studies have indicated that [Tourette syndrome] is inherited as a dominant gene, with about a 50 percent chance of parents passing the gene on to their children,” the CDC has said. And those symptoms typically surface in childhood or early adolescence.

If anything else causes Tourette’s, it’s unclear. Several things could be catalysts, though. According to the British National Health Service (NHS), smoking while pregnant may increase the risk of Tourette’s. Likewise, if a baby is underweight or experiences complications in the womb, it could have a higher chance of developing the condition. So, nothing about any YouTube videos...

There aren’t any specific tests for Tourette’s, either. Doctors actually diagnose it through the process of elimination. But even if your child does have tics, that doesn’t mean a lifelong struggle. In some cases, symptoms eventually subside after several months. 

And while a cure is nowhere in sight, it’s largely unnecessary anyway. The majority of cases of Tourette’s can be managed with medication or behavioral therapy. That had to be good news for the kids Müller-Vahl saw — the ones who apparently watched Jan Zimmermann’s channel.

If you’re wondering what happens before a tic, the NHS has described it as “a strong urge... which has been compared to the feeling you get before needing to itch or sneeze.” But while that feeling a sneeze is coming on may eventually go away, people with Tourette’s need to, well, scratch that itch with a tic.

If you think tics are all curse words, however, then think again. Only one in ten Tourette’s patients involuntarily swear as one of their compulsions. And people with the condition are all among us. Did you know, for example, that Dan Aykroyd had Tourette’s?

Yep, Akroyd was told he had Tourette’s when he was still just a kid. He experienced anxiety and vocal tics, which manifested as grunting. Thankfully for him, though, he managed to conquer the symptoms through therapy, and they were gone when he hit his 14th birthday.

Ray Donovan star Dash Mihok is another celebrity with Tourette’s, and he’s described it as “the greatest itch you’ve ever had times 5,000.” Mihok’s had a list of physical and vocal tics, but he’s weathered his experience to become a spokesperson for the Tourette Association of America.

Then, in 2019, Billie Eilish revealed she has Tourette’s. The young star told Ellen, “It’s something I’ve lived with my whole life. Like, everybody in my family, all my friends, all the people who are close to me know I have it. And it’s not anything different, you know?”

“I just never said anything because I didn’t want that to define who I was,” Eilish continued. “I have ways of making [the tics] go away.” Eilish went on to describe her facial tics, which she usually suppresses for interviews. She explained, “Normally if it’s a pre-taped thing, they cut out the questions, and that’s when I let them out.”

However, once Eilish did an interview where the questions were recorded, and she didn’t conceal her tics. They were subsequently broadcast, and sadly many people found it entertaining. “There were tons of compilations… like, ‘this is so funny’... when really, it’s just a bunch of tics,” she said. Eilish did realize something, though.

The singer revealed, “I also really learned that a lot of my fans have it, which made me feel more at home saying it. And also, I felt that there was a connection there.” It opened the gates for her to be someone whom fans with Tourette’s can look up to.

But if Tourette’s is neurological, then what did Müller-Vahl’s patients experience? Well, she and her team came to the conclusion that a mass sociogenic illness (MSI) was the cause. Basically, it’s a psychosomatic condition that transmits from person to person with no physical cause of infection. It’s not a modern phenomenon, either.

Way back in 1518, a bizarre illness struck the people of Strasbourg. A lady called Frau Troffea stepped into the middle of the street and began to dance, seemingly without any choice. And during her ‘performance,’ which lasted for almost a week, dozens of other people joined in. None of them were seemingly able to stop themselves.

It may sound funny — like a Medieval flash mob — but things soon turned serious. Within a month, 400 people were said to have been shaking their stuff. And while the town built a stage to help the afflicted dance away their illness, that didn’t work. Folks kept moving until they dropped from exhaustion.

Some dancers were thought to have succumbed to heart attacks, others to strokes until the outbreak finally ended. It sounds like fiction, but this ‘dancing mania’ is an early example of MSI. And it illustrates just how real the symptoms can be — even if the cause is psychological.

Müller-Vahl believes the influx of German Tourette’s is a contemporary version of MSI. Her and her colleagues’ report explains, “We report the first outbreak of a new type of mass sociogenic illness (MSI) that in contrast to all previously reported episodes is spread solely via social media. Accordingly, we suggest the more specific term ‘mass social media-induced illness (MSMI).’” 

The existence of MSMI is still just a theory, but Müller-Vahl and her team aren’t the only ones to notice a link between social media exposure and illness. Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital also got involved in the matter when its experts published concerns in a 2021 edition of the Archives of Disease in Childhood journal.

Apparently, there has also been an increase in young female patients with Tourette’s-like symptoms at the hospital. That led doctors to announce, “There is some concern that social media and websites such as TikTok that promote the sharing of videos of influencers with symptoms may have a part to play.” It does explain how girls are becoming more affected, as they’re usually at much lower risk for Tourette’s than their male peers.

So, what do social media influencers think about this? Well, while Zimmermann has yet to comment, others have spoken out in his place. Anita from the YouTube channel Sweet Anita has Tourette’s, and she wasn’t shy about expressing her opinion in her reaction video to the study.

“You can tell that these either aren’t medical professionals and the article is lying,” Anita said, “or that these people should have their medical license revoked.” She claims that the whole article is “dangerous” to people living with Tourette’s and that the doctors “betray” children who do indeed have the condition. 

But Suzanne Dobson, a spokesperson for the British charity Tourettes Action, believes the truth may fall somewhere in the middle. She told Wired, “Young women film themselves doing their tics and post it on TikTok and say, ‘What is happening to me?’ People say, ‘Maybe it’s Tourette’s,’ but they get a lot of likes.”

“They gather followers. And so, as their tics become more extreme, the more they post, the more they look for reassurance from their peer group, and the more the negative feedback loop perpetuates,” Dobson continued. It’s an interesting take, and it’s one with which British Tourette’s expert Uttom Chowdhury seems to agree.

Chowdhury has likewise experienced a surge of teenage female patients with symptoms similar to Tourette’s. He said, “These girls who are presenting did not have a family history [of tics], so there’s something different about this cohort. There’s a sense of reassurance. But then you do wonder if it’s providing the psychological need.”

“If they see something,” Chowdhury elaborated, “it’s very easy to copy, there’s that suggestibility. Watching these videos could be making people copy it as well. There may be a cohort of people who are very suggestible. In the same way there was hysteria in different centuries, there’s outbreaks of tics.”

Chowdhury continued, “We don’t know enough, and I’m not saying this is hysterical or made up. I always keep an open mind on it.” What’s the solution? Unfortunately, no one really knows. So much about Tourette’s and whatever is causing these symptoms remains a mystery. 

The phenomenon isn’t entirely unexpected, though. New Zealand sociologist and MSI expert Robert Bartholomew predicted MSMI back in 2012. He told Wired, “I think that being in a cloistered lockdown environment, and spending more time on sites such as YouTube and TikTok, have likely intensified the effects of these sites on young people.”

Clearly, more research needs to be carried out to get to the root of the problem. However, it’s important to note that the experts aren’t saying MSMI isn’t real. Neither are they diminishing its importance. They’re simply trying to distinguish what the cause is and how to treat it.

In the same way that the dancing mania was very real in its day, so too is the current outbreak of tics — or, as some have termed them, “TikTok tics.” But there could be a silver lining to the phenomenon. More research into MSMI could by proxy benefit those with Tourette’s — an already overlooked and misunderstood condition.