30Chapter 25. The Pandemic in Social Media: When the Screen Became a Pulpit

Before the invention of the printing press, an idea was a prisoner of the human body. Want to share it with the world? Accept the limits of physiology. Write by hand until your fingers cramp, or strain your voice addressing crowds face to face. Physical barriers stood like iron gates at every turn. One preacher—just a few hundred words shouted through a horn. One scribe—a few dozen copies after a year of exhausting labor. Ideas spread slowly. And along the way, they faced ruthless filters: theological schools, censorship, competing opinions. And the final hurdle—the cold common sense of listeners.

Gutenberg changed the scale. A single book printed on a press could circulate in thousands of copies. This accelerated the spread of ideas—both good and harmful. The printing press fueled the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation; it also drove the dissemination of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) and dozens of other dangerous texts.

Radio and television marked the next steps in evolution. By the mid-20th century, an idea could reach millions of people simultaneously. Yet these technologies still had gatekeepers: editors, censors, channel owners, and state regulators. To broadcast an idea, one had to pass through filters. The filters varied—harsh in totalitarian regimes, gentler in democracies—but they were always present.

In the 2010s, with the rise of mobile internet, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Telegram, an entirely new type of environment emerged. Here, every person with a smartphone became a potential preacher, broadcasting their ideas to millions of viewers without intermediaries. Filters, in essence, vanished. An algorithm remained, but it favored emotional reactions over scientifically grounded content.

This is the new medium for spreading ideas. New media. And for our topic—a new medium for spreading a pandemic of madness.

Several figures illustrating the scale.

A study published in 2024 in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology analyzed a thousand randomly selected TikTok videos about mental health. The results: — 6.3% of the videos contained disinformation—directly false or scientifically unsubstantiated claims; — 15.7% of the videos contained partially verified or distorted information (misinformation); — Nearly a quarter of the videos about cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) included negative claims unsupported by research—such as that CBT is “ineffective,” a “form of psychological invalidation,” and “harmful to people with trauma.”

Another study, published in JAMA in 2023, identified fifty-two prominent physicians who spread medical disinformation on social media and had large followings. These were not fringe figures—they were individuals with medical degrees, leveraging their professional status to propagate false information.

In an official 2024 publication, the American Psychological Association states plainly: purveyors of disinformation often have a direct financial stake in the advice they give. They sell books, courses, supplements, sessions, channel subscriptions. Financial interest is the primary engine of dissemination.

Now — to the mechanisms that make social media such an especially effective spreader of the pandemic of madness.

The first mechanism is algorithmic selection by emotional intensity.

The algorithms of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are optimized for a single metric: user retention time. The longer a person watches, the more ads they will see and the more money the platform will make. To hold attention, the algorithm promotes content that triggers strong emotions: outrage, fear, surprise, admiration.

Scientific truth is usually boring. “Treating OCD requires six to twelve months of cognitive behavioral therapy with exposure and response prevention; efficacy is around 80%” — this is information backed by real science, but it doesn’t provoke an emotional response. No one will linger on a video like that.

But this: “You’ve been given the wrong diagnoses your whole life! The real cause of your anxiety is a birth program! My client was cured in a single session!” — that’s a viral story. Surprise, hope, outrage at the “injustice” of mainstream medicine, the promise of a quick fix — all packed into one short video. The algorithm promotes it. Millions will see it; only tens of thousands will see the boring video about CBT.

Structurally, what emerges is this: effective, boring, real science loses out on social media to ineffective, captivating, fake science. Not because users are stupid. But because the system is built to promote the latter.

The second mechanism is authority without credentials.

In traditional media — a newspaper, a TV channel, an academic journal — a speaker had to present some documentation confirming their competence. A diploma, a position, a list of publications, an editor’s approval. On social media, none of these credentials is required. All you need is charisma and the ability to edit short videos.

The result is a strange phenomenon: a person with a Moscow University diploma and thirty years of clinical practice has three thousand followers on Instagram, while a person who took a paid three-day course in an “original method” has half a million. Looking at the follower counts, the audience draws the natural conclusion: if the second one has more, then his information must be more useful.

This is what media researchers call the inflation of authority. Authority has lost its connection to qualification. It has become a function of audience size. And audience size, in turn, has become a function of skill at playing the algorithm.

The third mechanism is social proof and the echo chamber.

Humans are social creatures. We trust what others trust. If I see that thousands of people have left rapturous comments under a video — “thank you, you changed my life,” “I was cured in three days” — I’m inclined to trust that information more than a boring doctor with a waiting room full of patients who can’t explain his diagnosis in thirty seconds.

You open the comments. An ocean of delight. “Saved my life,” “incredible effect,” “grateful forever.” Pause. Why is everyone under a single post suddenly so happy? First, the placebo works even when it doesn’t. One in ten will still exclaim: “It helped!” Second, a moderator with cold fingers has already deleted the comment tagged #scam. All that’s left is “thank you.” Third, the platform itself is a giant filter. The algorithm feeds you likes from like-minded people while dissenters quietly vanish into a digital vacuum. Silence. Everyone’s happy. You keep scrolling, never knowing what you’ve already missed.

Someone opening an Instagram account for a “theta healer” sees thousands of glowing testimonials. They don’t see the thousands of people who paid and got no results but wrote nothing about it — because the algorithm never puts them in the feed.

The fourth mechanism is circumventing ethical codes.

As we saw in the chapter on ethics, modern international ethical standards in medicine and psychology prohibit direct advertising of healing effects, promises of specific outcomes, exploitation of client vulnerability, and sexualized or dependency-inducing communication. These prohibitions apply to licensed professionals: violating them risks losing one’s license.

For unregulated practitioners, these prohibitions don’t apply. On social media, a “coach,” “regression therapist,” or “theta healer” can freely post “testimonials from clients who got rid of depression in a single session,” talk about “miraculous healings from serious illnesses,” and emotionally exploit people’s pain to promote their courses. No one will punish them for it. And the effectiveness of such advertising is dozens of times higher than the modest, ethically correct advertising of a real psychotherapist.

This creates unfair competition. A licensed professional who follows ethical norms loses the competition for audience attention to someone who breaks them. The market rewards the violator — with money, fame, followers.

The consequences are especially severe for a young audience.

Sixteen years old. Blood boiling with a hormonal storm. Mood swings — natural at this age, but under a double pressure: school stress and family fractures. A teenager opens TikTok. Freezes. On the screen — a video. The first words hit like a verdict: “If you have these symptoms — you have bipolar disorder!” Then comes the list. “Sharp mood swings.” “Irritability.” “Insomnia.” Vague, generalized signs. Every teenager on the planet fits them. But the brain has already latched on. The teenager saves the video. Searches for similar ones. The algorithm registers the interest. The trap snaps shut. The feed starts showing more.

A month later, the teenager becomes convinced he has bipolar disorder. He self-diagnoses. He starts behaving according to this diagnosis. It becomes his identity. American psychiatry has coined this phenomenon “TikTok psychiatry” — self-diagnosis through social media.

Researchers note a surge in self-diagnosed ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder among teenagers since 2020—precisely when TikTok became this age group’s dominant platform. Some of these self-diagnoses hold up under clinical evaluation. Most don’t. But when teens arrive at a doctor’s office not with symptoms, but with a pre-packaged diagnosis from TikTok, it significantly complicates clinical practice.

Worse yet are cases where the teen doesn’t see a doctor, but instead finds some influencer “specializing” in “their” condition. The influencer confirms the diagnosis, pitches some “signature method,” and demands payment for a “course.” The teen and their parents pay up. They complete the program. The teen shows no improvement—possibly because they never had the condition they imagined. Yet they receive validation as someone “ill,” cementing this identity long-term.

The most tragic aspect? Teens choosing careers as “psychics.”

In 2023, Russian media reported on sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls launching Instagram accounts offering tarot “alignments” and “readings.” Hundreds of followers, first paid sessions, thousands earned. They watch adults making millions this way—why not try? Education? Unnecessary. A gaze into others’ karma? “I’ve had this gift since childhood.”

These aren’t just girls—they’re casualties of the system. They’ve entered adulthood in an era where serious professions (medicine, science, engineering) demand years of training, offer meager starting pay, and bring no fame; while the “psychic” path requires no education, grants instant status, and promises quick cash.

Can we blame a sixteen-year-old for this choice? No. Blame society for making this career path not just possible, but prestigious.

Finally: The Battle of Psychics and similar shows.

The Battle of Psychics. Since 2007. TNT Channel. One of Russian television’s most successful entertainment franchises. The premise seems simple: contestants claiming paranormal abilities compete in brutal challenges. What shadows lurk beneath these rituals? Victims of crimes. Missing persons. Unmarked graves. Viewers’ skin crawls as cameras zoom on frozen expressions, the studio air thick with unspoken horror. What truly fuels these ratings—others’ pain or secrets? The winner gets a cash prize and the title “Psychic of the Year.” But who really wins this ing game? *

The show was staged. From the first frame to the last. A factory of illusions dressed up as reality. Here’s a fact: when cameras turned off, participants spoke the truth. Here’s another: in interviews, they admitted rehearsing challenges in advance. Here’s a third: “crime-solving clairvoyants” in the studio? Hired actors. Mystical “information readings”? Pre-scripted briefings. That’s it. Exposed. But the real mystery isn’t there. It’s deeper. How does a fake pull in millions of viewers? Who are these people believing in tricks? Watch. The show’s winners become public figures. They gain substance. They gain status. They’re invited for private consultations—prices skyrocket to tens of thousands. They publish books. They run their own online schools. The illusion is swallowed. The illusion is monetized.

For millions of viewers—especially those unable to critically analyze TV content—the show creates the conviction: “supernatural abilities exist.” And if they exist, why see a doctor when you’re suffering? See a psychic instead.

This isn’t entertainment. It’s a powerful pipeline normalizing a pseudoscientific worldview. And that pipeline is funded by ads—meaning, ultimately, by ordinary commercial interests that see no problem with such content.

What do we do about it?

The honest answer? We don’t know. The global scientific community is just beginning to grasp the scale of the issue and search for solutions.

The first approach: warning labels. Social media has already launched the mechanism. The “Expert-Verified” badge—first shield. The “Contains Unverified Health Claims” tag—second. Links to credible sources—third. It looks foolproof. But does it work? The effectiveness remains frustratingly limited. And that raises a question no platform developer can dismiss: what’s the point of a warning sign if no one even glances at it? Labels work—but only under one strict condition: only if users notice them and consciously pay attention. Two “ifs”—two solid walls between the warning and an actual human.

The second approach: teaching doctors social media communication. Harvard’s School of Public Health launched specialized programs training medical professionals to craft compelling short-form content. They learn TikTok’s language, Instagram Reels’ pacing, attention-retention tricks. Hundreds of certified specialists have completed these courses. Their audiences are growing but remain tiny compared to pseudoscientific influencers.

The third approach: regulation. The EU will enact the Digital Services Act in 2024, requiring major platforms to take concrete action against medical misinformation. France introduced criminal liability in 2023 for exploiting a client’s psychological vulnerability for financial gain—the first law directly criminalizing “spiritual healers” and “coaches” preying on desperate people. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan have no equivalent laws.

The fourth front is educational. Classrooms are becoming a battlefield. The first elements of media literacy are appearing in curricula: teenagers are taught to tell evidence-based sources from dubious ones, to recognize hidden commercial motives behind the mask of “well-meaning advice,” to avoid confusing popularity with authority. But such programs are still few. A drop in the ocean. Students finish school, step out into life—and find themselves unarmed before the power of informational influence. Their heads are targets, and there is no shelter. Who will teach them to defend themselves? The question remains open.

The main thing I want to say in this chapter: social media is not merely a new environment in which an old pandemic spreads. It is a new, vastly more powerful, faster, and more all-encompassing mechanism of its spread. And this mechanism works against scientific psychiatry structurally—not through the ill will of individuals, but through the very architecture of the platforms.

A single “theta healer” with a million Instagram followers can poison more minds in a year than a hundred of Walter Freeman’s lobotomies did in twenty. The consequences are not physical, but mental, social, financial—devastating for families.

And here is what truly chills the blood. Freeman, that monster from Tredwell, was at least condemned. By colleagues in the profession. Openly. With contempt. History has written him into its black pages—the place where Walter Freeman and his lobotomy belong. But no one will condemn this one. “Theta healer.” A man who breaks skulls and lives. He will be given awards. At ceremonies. “Psychologist of the Year”—the cold gold of the statuette trembling in his hands. He will be invited onto popular shows—and he will smile into the blinding lens. He will be a speaker at forums, and the halls will applaud. He will receive admiring reviews from his female followers, who sincerely believe he changed their lives. No one will condemn him. Publicly.

And thousands of young “colleagues” will look at his career and build their own on his model.

This is today’s lobotomy. It is bloodless, but not harmless. It is not performed in operating rooms, but it is performed—in millions of smartphones, in millions of bedrooms, in millions of teenage heads.

Something needs to be done about this. And that brings us to the next chapter—about why, in a world where sausages, fire safety devices, automobiles, and shampoos are strictly regulated for compliance with their stated characteristics, services for “cleansing karma” and “working with ancestral programs” are not regulated at all.

RED FLAG. If you learned about a method from your feed; if its author’s follower count runs into the hundreds of thousands while their count of publications in scientific journals is zero; if the testimonials are all “changed my life” and there is no data at all—remember: the algorithm showed this to you not because it works, but because it keeps you glued to the screen. Treating yourself by feed is like diagnosing yourself by applause.