ATTENTION PARENTS: From Illinois to Florida Teen Girls With ‘Tics,’ From TikTok

***ATTENTION PARENTS***

As your teenage daughter is dancing and singing and laughing, while being fully engaged on TikTok...do you really know what's going on?

This social media platform has turned this generation into the kind of "zombies" we were playing Atari 2600 or Nintendo. You are focused on a screen to no end, but this one is in the palm of your hand.

Allow me to spit some facts at you from ClevelandClinic Tics are more common in boys than girls. Tourette’s, is four times more likely in boys than in girls. So WHY are girls visiting their local medical facility at an alarming rate as of late with these types of symptoms? TikTok.

So here's what is happening to these teenage girls that stare at their TikTok app for hours. If you are a parent of a teenage daughter, have you witnessed this?

•  A sudden appearance of verbal and motor tics
• Shouting the same phrases over and ever, at random
• Display jerking or flapping movements

Is this an isolated thing? No.

“Initially, everyone thought they were seeing an isolated phenomenon, but it turns out that we’re all seeing it — a different age of onset, and disturbingly, an explosive onset. In just a few hours, maybe a day or two, girls who have no history of tics suddenly start to experience a lot of movement and vocalization...When it comes to social media, this should be a wake-up call for us all,”- Pediatric Neurologist Mohammed Aldosari, MD

Watch your kids, look for these signs and sudden movements:

• Repetition of seemingly random words or phrases.
• Repetition of swear words and other obscene gestures.
• Hand/arm movements, clapping and pointing, random and sudden movements.
• Hitting or banging their own body parts, and other people or objects.

If you have concern, see your local physician. It's better to be safe and address these things sooner than later.