By the middle of August 2023, one of Joey Lawrence’s videos on TikTok had over 3 million views — and it wasn’t a viral dance or recipe. Lawrence, a psychologist who also happens to be autistic, had posted the video about a month prior to talk about a new autism assessment on monotropism, when a person’s attention is dedicated to a narrow range of interests.
The views on Lawrence’s video aren’t entirely surprising: TikTok has exploded with content on neurodiversity since the app’s surge in popularity during the pandemic. Now there are over 11 billion views on TikTok’s hashtag #neurodivergent, and Google searches for the term have increased steadily over the past year.
