Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 14-year-old son is pretty active on TikTok. I monitor his activity fairly routinely (with his permission) and I’m positive he’s not sending or receiving inappropriate videos, interacting with people he doesn’t personally know, or anything else high-risk. Instead, I’ve discovered something else disconcerting: he is faking having a major, extremely stigmatized disability.
My son is fairly neurotypical—he suffers from anxiety and depression, as many teens do, and has found therapy helpful. But I discovered a set of TikToks he posted where he’s claiming to have been diagnosed with a very specific disability—he’s posting things like “if you do x, you probably have y” and also sharing videos of himself doing certain actions that are characteristic of folks with this disability. I know beyond a doubt he does not have this disability. I’ve talked with his therapist extensively, as well as his pediatrician, to confirm. Neither saw any indication of anything remotely like this in him.
I’ve overheard him talking with some friends before about “Disability TikTok,” and it makes me wonder whether he’s found some sort of “home” in this corner of the Internet, and that he’s pretending he has this disability to make himself feel more valid, welcomed, or seen. But I’m horrified he’d pursue this farce,...
Read Full Story: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/09/teens-secret-lives-social-media-tiktok-parenting-advice-from-care-and-feeding.html
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