ADHD symptoms are legion — a song stuck in your head isn’t one

October 28, 2023

We’ve all been there: A pesky pop song gets stuck on an endless, uncontrollable loop in your head for hours on end.

Now, one TikToker has gone viral with a wild claim that the phenomenon — known as an “earworm” — is a symptom of ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

And while experts are challenging the notion, that hasn’t appeared to put a damper on the lively discussion.

“I literally thought this was normal,” said the armchair self-analyst, who goes by @himroids on the popular social media platform.

The young man recounted a recent interaction with a friend who said that, after taking an unspecified medication, she no longer had songs stuck in her head.

Shocked, he hurried over to Google, which he claimed told him earworms could potentially be both a symptom of ADHD and OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder — determining he “definitely” has ADHD.

TikToker talking about earworms being "not normal" — The TikToker claimed earworms are “not normal” and a symptom of ADHD or OCD.

TikTok saying he "definitely" has ADHD — A simple Google search sent the creator down a rabbit hole about earworms.

Hundreds of commenters claimed they, too, experience chronic song loops, some shocked that it wasn’t “normal,” while others named their brain’s current obsession.

Experts have flatly refuted the creator’s claims.

New York City physician Dr. Stuart Fischer told the Daily Mail that “‘there is no disease that only causes people to repeat tunes over and over.”

“When you hear a new catchy pop song you’ll be thinking about it and maybe humming it up once you get the melody,” he explained. “This doesn’t mean you have a mental illness. That’s crazy.”

Certain melodies can be infectious — and they’re designed that way.

Using an example of a Broadway composer, Fischer said they’d likely “love you to be singing their hit tune as you leave the theater,” but it isn’t just reserved for people with ADHD.

ADHD symptoms — broadly categorized as inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity — would be “reflected in many different areas of life,” Fischer added, such as “repetitive physical behaviors, repetitive vocabulary.”

In other words, the symptoms expand well beyond pesky earworms, which are typically harmless.

However, an earworm may be more agitating or stressful to someone with a disorder, Dr. Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School, told HuffPost.

“With OCD, it’s about the response,” Olivardia said. “They might get anxious if they can’t remember the song, or feel a moral responsibility to figure it out or else something bad will happen.”

To scratch the “cognitive itch,” as some researchers have aptly called it, it’s common practice to listen to the entire song.

However, some research has found evidence that turning on a “cure tune” — such as “Happy Birthday,” “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club or “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin, per the study — drowned out the originally stuck song.

Other methods include finding a distraction or even chewing gum.

Social media platforms, like TikTok, have given rise to an influx of self-diagnoses of certain disorders, despite experts’ calls for users to speak with medical professionals instead.

“People are looking for diagnoses to validate their behavior… they self diagnose based on the internet,” Fischer said.

“They come up with some very strange ideas.”