July 22, 2026
There are his prescription drugs, stimulant Adderall and anti-depressant Pristiq, and then there are the others. Among them: Magnesium, touted as helping with anxiety and insomnia; Lion’s Mane for a calm focus; and bacopa monnieri, a purported memory enhancer derived from a herb with small flowers.
Scicluna, now in his late teens, started taking supplements when he was about 14 years old. His current stack — a grab-bag of chemicals that cost about $50 a month — has been put together almost completely through his own research online. He was searching for ways to treat the symptoms of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder without psychiatric medications, which he said made him feel like a zombie, but settled on a complex routine that he said helps him “feel normal.”
“I’m able to think much clearer with them,” said Scicluna, who has also been diagnosed with autism and Tourette’s Syndrome. “On days when I don’t bother to take them, I just feel like I perform worse cognitively.” His current regimen has been built through trial and error — some supplements he tried made him feel good some days but “weird” on others, and the effects have also varied as his prescription has changed.
As young people seek out information to help tackle their ADHD, a condition with symptoms that include difficulty concentrating and hyperactivity, some have turned to supplements as a complement or alternative to their prescription medications. Some are sourcing information from social media: On TikTok and Reddit posts about “nootropics” and “supplement stacks” tout products that purport to help.
While Scicluna sought out alternatives online after getting a clinical diagnosis, and keeps his doctor in the loop, others are forming routines solely through social media.
In a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 high schoolers, more than half said they’ve used social media to diagnose mental health conditions at least once, according to EdWeek.
“When you go onto social media, it’s easy to get tracked in some way where you become inundated with content about particularly ADHD,” said Ryan Sultan, an ADHD researcher and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. The proliferation can lead many people to question if they have the condition, he said.
TikTok Effect
Zoe Shirken, 27, is a clinical psychology graduate student at Antioch University in Los Angeles and an integrative health coach. She is also a content creator with more than 20,000 followers on TikTok. Shirken was diagnosed with ADHD in eighth grade and said she took the prescription stimulant Vyvanse for about eight years before stopping after she finished college. She began to take a low dosage of l-theanine, a supplement naturally found in green tea, as an alternative.
Shirken’s first video sharing her experience using l-theanine supplements daily got 2.2 million views and more than 150,000 likes. Soon after, the brand that she recommended reached out to work with her, and she agreed to a partnership speaking about the product. That video got even more engagement.
Since then, Shirken said that other brands have reached out, sending PR packages and asking for their products to be featured in her videos. But she’s cautious, especially if she hasn’t personally tried the product. “I want to be very careful about being part of any noise,” she said.
TikTok has grown into a popular e-commerce platform for supplements, generating sales in the US in 2025 of about $1 billion, an industry report from the Nutrition Business Journal estimated. On TikTok Shop, US revenue from supplements linked from videos with ADHD-related hashtags was almost $7 million in the 12 months through May, data from Charm.io analyzed for Bloomberg News show.
The US Food and Drug Administration has strict rules for the advertisements of prescription drugs, ensuring that they are only marketed for approved indications and that companies disclose side effects and possible risks. But since dietary supplements don’t need FDA approval, the only restrictions placed on influencers touting the products is if they make false marketing claims.
Misinformation about mental health topics on social media can range from overgeneralizations based on personal experience to inaccurate information. Despite the risk, a growing number of young people are trusting social media sources rather than their doctor. A 2025 survey from strategic communications firm Edelman found that 38% of adults aged 18 to 34 have disregarded their provider’s medical guidance in favor of advice from social media, a 12 percentage point increase from the prior year.
And for young people cobbling together custom regimens, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer: A request for suggestions on a Reddit forum can yield everything from supplements that posters consider “a small miracle” to recommendations to follow strict routines, get sunlight and play chess.
A representative for TikTok said that its community guidelines prohibit health-related misinformation, including inaccurate medical advice. It also directs users to support and public health services when certain terms are searched. Reddit didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Custom Blends
Supplement makers have caught onto the trend, expanding product lines and shifting focus from filling nutritional gaps to supporting mental health and aiding sleep. Some have introduced custom blends of chemicals, marketed either as natural remedies for conditions like ADHD or as a complement to a prescription drug regimen. Many of the advertised benefits overlap with some of the most common side effects of psychiatric drugs — Adderall, for example, lists trouble sleeping and nervousness among its potential secondary effects.
Children's Supplement Industry Crosses $1 Billion Mark
Sales of children's health supplements have steadily grown since 2020
While the boom in products marketed around so-called wellness has been largely attributed to Gen Z and millennial consumers, even younger generations are getting swept up.
Olly, a popular vitamin brand, sells a children’s line that includes products called “Chillax” and “Melatonin-Free Sleep,” each containing a combination of supplements. Hiya Health sells a “Bedtime Essentials” blend that comes with stickers to decorate the bottle. Both companies have worked with celebrities and influencers on Instagram and TikTok to promote their products. Their websites also include prominent disclaimers that the benefits they tout haven’t been evaluated by the FDA.
The supplements aren’t marketed to treat a specific condition — and many parents will seek them out for kids without a diagnosis — but online reviews for both brands’ products mention kids with ADHD or autism whose parents feel they’ve benefitted from the blends.
Stasis, which sells blends of supplements marketed to both adults and children, is more explicit. Stasis Kids, which comes in day and nighttime formulations containing saffron, l-theanine and magnesium glycinate, is described as being a “complete daily system for kids on stimulants.”
“Companies are being careful about how they position these products for kids,” said Erika Craft, a data and insights manager at Nutrition Business Journal. Higher regulatory scrutiny for children’s products means that products are marketed for “healthy focus” instead of explicitly treating attention issues, she said.
Stasis, Hiya Health and Olly said in statements to Bloomberg News that their products are not designed to replace medication or treat any condition. Stasis and Hiya also said that doctors are best placed to recommend medications and give prescriptions, and Hiya said that its products are exclusively marketed to parents.
The US supplement market reached about $74 billion in sales in 2025 and is expected to reach nearly $100 billion by 2029, according to data from the Nutrition Business Journal. Supplements for children’s health were expected to make up around $983 million of last year’s sales, a figure that has grown steadily since 2020.
Large consumer and pharmaceutical companies have taken notice of the trend, too. Unilever Plc has built out its wellness division, acquiring Olly in 2019 and most recently supplement brand Gruns, which also has a popular kids line. Hiya Health is owned by the publicly traded Usana Health Sciences Inc.
Prescription Fatigue
Consumers have long turned to supplements to alleviate all manner of symptoms. But under US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a drive to address the overprescription of psychiatric drugs, “especially among children,” has helped fuel a cultural shift away from medication.
In May, Kennedy published a plan to “curb psychiatric overprescribing” which included a report to be issued that month on deprescribing trends. As of July 21, the report is yet to be published.
While the deprescription drive doesn’t explicitly mention supplements, the health secretary is a vocal proponent of alternative treatments, saying on a 2023 podcast that he takes so many vitamins and nutrients that he “couldn’t even remember” the list. At the same time, his crackdown on food safety has posed a threat to the supplements industry.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said that dietary supplements are regulated by the FDA after they reach the market, including through inspections of manufacturing facilities and by investigating complaints. The spokesperson reiterated the agency’s plan to address what it deems to be “a growing challenge of overmedicalization” in mental health care.
Several doctors told Bloomberg they have seen an uptick in parents asking about supplements for their young children with anxiety or ADHD, citing discussions they’ve seen in the news or on social media about overmedication in American children.
“I often meet families who want to try behavioral strategies, school supports, sleep changes, nutrition, exercise, therapy or supplements before considering medication,” said Mai Uchida, a child psychiatrist at Mass General Brigham. “Supplements can feel more accessible and less intimidating than prescription medication.”
Young adults may feel disillusioned about traditional psychiatric treatments that have either been ineffective or caused unwanted side effects, said Jennifer Gates, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Psychiatry. Gates said that some of her patients use the internet to crowdsource treatments without speaking to their providers.
It’s important that people talk to their doctor about what they’re taking, Gates said, since supplements can exacerbate side effects or diminish the potency of prescription medications. Uchida also cautioned that supplements can vary in quality and purity, especially on online shopping platforms.
For some, supplements — which are largely unregulated and do not need to be approved by the FDA before they are sold — feel like too much of an unknown.
One Connecticut mom’s son was seven years old when he was diagnosed with ADHD, and they decided to try medication after he said he had trouble focusing in school. The first drug they tried, Ritalin, didn’t make a difference, she said, asking to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, and an amphetamine he took next flattened his personality.
Though she’s seen posts on social media about supplements like magnesium and saffron that might help his symptoms, she said she’s hesitant to try them without more evidence. If she did buy anything, it would only be if it had been recommended by a doctor, she said.
For now, she’s continuing to try medication, and has recently switched her son to a new type of ADHD pill. The process, she said, feels like medical roulette.