Abby was never the “hyper kid” in class. She made good grades, mostly kept quiet and knew how to read the room. But in college, something shifted. Group projects overwhelmed her. Deadlines felt impossible. She’d spend hours hyperfocused on the wrong task, then spiral when she ran out of time for the actual assignment. One night, after watching a TikTok about ADHD masking, it clicked: Oh. This might be me.
She didn’t feel broken—just seen. She wasn’t alone, either.
Scroll any social media feed right now and you’ll find a steady stream of creators talking openly about ADHD, autism, dyslexia and other forms of neurodivergence. Not from the clinical, textbook lens—but from lived experience. It’s vulnerable, personal, relatable—and for Gen Z, it’s become one of the most common ways young people start to explore the idea that their brain might be wired differently.
An entire generation has grown up in an era of reduced stigma around mental health, with the vocabulary to name what earlier generations didn’t even know they were experiencing. That’s largely a good thing, says professor Francesca Happé, a cognitive neuroscientist at King’s College London.
“There’s a lot more tolerance, which is good—particularly among my children’s generation, who are late teens and early adults, where people are very happy to say, ‘I’m dyslexic,’ ‘I’m ADHD.’”
That openness has led to more people pursuing official diagnoses. But it’s also opened the door to a wave of self-diagnosis—young people identifying as neurodivergent without ever stepping into a clinician’s office.
And that, experts say, is reshaping how we think about diagnosis altogether.
In recent years, diagnoses of autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental conditions have skyrocketed. In the United Kingdom, autism diagnoses jumped 787% between 1998 and 2018. In the United States, a 2024 study of 12 million health records from Kaiser Permanente found that autism diagnoses rose 175% in the last decade, with the biggest spikes among adults and women—groups that have historically gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years.
But those official numbers may only tell half the story. According to Happé, “An increasing number of people are choosing to self-identify [as neurodivergent] without seeking a diagnosis.”
And this moment—where people are naming their own cognitive differences outside the medical system—is pushing the boundaries of what diagnosis even means.
“That is going to change things,” she says. “Because we may well already be at a point where there are more neurodivergent self-identified people than neurotypical people. Once you take autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and all the other ways that you can developmentally be different from the typical, you actually don’t get many typical people left. That is going to change society, but not in a bad way.”
Still, the rise in self-diagnosis comes with questions—not just about accuracy, but about how we define difference in the first place.
“Most of the science around conditions like ADHD and autism suggests they are on a continuum and where you put the boundary is a clinical judgment,” Happé explains. “But whether we have now come too far down the dimension to something we would have called a personality type—or a bit of eccentricity—and we are now giving that a medical term, whether that’s helpful or not is a discussion we need to have.”
In other words, it’s possible that what used to be seen as quirks or personality traits—intense focus, a need for routine, social awkwardness—are now getting pathologized under the banner of neurodivergence. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Naming something can help people understand themselves and ask for support. But it does raise the question: Where’s the line between helpful self-awareness and overmedicalization?
For many young people, that line is hard to see—especially when the internet blurs it on purpose.
On TikTok, creators post “10 Signs You Might Have ADHD” or “Neurodivergent Girl Things” that mix clinical traits with universal experiences. A 2023 study by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that less than half of the most popular ADHD-related TikToks aligned with diagnostic guidelines. That doesn’t mean they’re all misleading, but it does mean the algorithm isn’t a substitute for evaluation.
And yet, for many, these videos are the first time they’ve ever heard someone describe what their experience feels like. It’s validating. It’s affirming. And it’s why so many people start exploring the idea of being neurodivergent long before they ever talk to a professional.
Which makes sense, when you consider how broken the traditional diagnosis system still is. Getting assessed as an adult can take months and cost thousands of dollars. Many women, particularly women of color, are still misdiagnosed or never diagnosed at all. For some, self-identifying isn’t bypassing the system. It’s acknowledging the system never saw them in the first place.
Happé herself wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until adulthood—after her daughter began showing signs.
“When we first went to the speech and language therapist, there are all kinds of exercises you are supposed to do,” she recalled. “For example, helping her hear the difference between two things, and I couldn’t do them. I had exactly the same blind spots as her.”
There’s also real value in receiving a diagnosis—not just for access to care, but for navigating everyday life.
“A diagnosis can help people communicate their needs in social settings,” Happé says. “An autistic woman used to have to spend 10 minutes in restaurants explaining why she was ordering plain pasta with nothing on it. Now she can just say: ‘I’m autistic. I have sensory issues and I’m very particular about food.’”
Even so, the growing comfort with self-identification is shifting how society talks about brains, behavior and belonging. The lines between medical category, cultural identity and online community are more blurred than ever.
But maybe that’s not a crisis. Maybe it’s a sign of a culture finally making room for complexity. A culture where difference doesn’t need to be “fixed,” just understood.
So yes, Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to identify as neurodivergent. And yes, not all of those identifications come from a doctor’s office. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
It means this generation is asking better questions about how we define normal. They’re choosing language that helps them name their experience. And in a world that hasn’t always made space for that, maybe a little self-diagnosis isn’t a threat to medicine—it’s a reflection of something medicine is still learning to see.
As Happé sees it, “That is going to change society, but not in a bad way.”
