For The Exclusive,
By Muskan Joshi
From a fairly inconspicuous app, mainly used for lip-syncing- Musical.ly to being one of the most popular apps with an exponentially growing user count, TikTok has now become a household name. The extent of its popularity reaching to the point that now most of the viral videos and trends you see on other platforms, can even be traced back to TikTok.
TikTok’s incredible user-friendliness and short video duration, allow for low-effort production, meaning that anyone now with a phone can produce videos and get creative with their content in many ways, from funny skits, day-in-my-life vlogs, and informative videos in a variety of fields from fashion, beauty, and even healthcare, the list isn't exhaustive. Tiktok’s algorithm is designed in a way that anyone can go viral and be TikTok famous, which is completely different from platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, where it takes multiple years of work and consistent posting to achieve the same. All of these reasons have allowed TikTok to be one of the fastest-growing social media platforms today.
With all the discourse on the internet lately over the USA trying to impose a ban on TikTok -not for the right reasons if I must say-, the realization has dawned on me that TikTok actually may not be so good for us, both from a societal and biological point of view- hear me out.
TikTok has numerous beauty filters and a beauty mode, which are so good at what they do that if a creator uses them, the viewers can't tell if a filter was in use or if they’re all natural. The same goes with video editing, these tools have gotten extremely good, that one cannot tell the editing unless they are experts in it themselves, with many creators being exposed to posting videos where they have edited their bodies while posting outfit videos, and even fitness videos!
Humans are bound to compare themselves with others, but what they're comparing themselves to isn't even real, this further promotes unreal beauty standards. We also have to realize that a huge demographic of this app is teenagers, and these unreal beauty standards can further perpetuate insecurities and a constellation of issues that come along with it, from depression to the feeling of inadequacy and even eating disorders because they're young and cannot tell the difference between what's real and what's not. It's baffling to me that people promote and show a narrative that's not even real, without realizing the extent of impact they have.
I also firmly believe that TikTok is the hotspot of misinformation. The ease of video creation allows self-proclaimed “experts' to share false information, and a huge number of teenage users believing all this misinformation, considering they are young and impressionable. Any kind of misinformation is always dangerous. I have seen so many people on TikTok with absolutely zero medical knowledge, talk about various “supplements” we should use, recommend different vitamins, and promote the narrative that modern medicine is out to harm you and to believe in what's “natural”, along with this various “fitness influencers” sharing bogus advice on nutrition, losing weight, etc, and even horrible skincare advice, these are just a few examples of the multitude of misinformation I have seen on this app.
Another extremely harmful aspect is what I call “the tiktokification of therapy and mental health”, although it's amazing that many therapists now share quality mental health advice and help people realize traits they need to seek out help for, in many cases, people, misdiagnose and confuse perfectly normal traits as being neurodivergent. The self-help culture initially started as a reminder to always choose yourself and is now transitioning to create a generation of hyper-selfish individuals who cannot see beyond themselves. The hyper-individualization of therapy has distorted the idea of community and relationships, and what initially was a reminder to people to be good to themselves, is now a tool for a hyper-individualization of society.
TikTok is causing our society to regress, in the worst possible way. Since it's so incredibly easy to create videos with limited regulation, people on there have a free pass to be a sexist, homophobic, and racist assholes, and completely get away with it, and if you go into the comments you'd be disgusted to see how many people agree with such things. Problematic takes on feminism and racist and homophobic discourse have allowed so much hate to perpetuate on that app, further normalizing it for the majority of users, especially teenagers who see and agree with all of it. I used to believe that Gen Z was the most progressive generation, and it irked me when I read the comments of certain TikToks and saw literal kids spewing so much hate.
And if not all this, from a neurologic point of view- TikTok is frying our brains.
Scrolling mindlessly on TikTok for hours causes short repeated bursts of dopamine, which activates the reward centers of our brain, leading to its addictive nature and further decreasing our attention span and exhausting our dopaminergic system, leading to depression and anxiety. Seeing a large number of videos, in a short duration of time while continuously scrolling for more, leads to our brains being unable to regulate emotions- further leading to brain fog and worsening attention spans.
So all this, now brings us back to the original question - Should countries take the cue of India to impose a ban on TikTok or initiate the process, as the US has? No, I don’t think so. As fundamentally, the app itself has tons of benefits and provides a great source of entertainment and education for people all over the world. What I believe would be a solution is careful regulation over the content that's posted, allowing only rightful information to be shared, and a warning given if a creator is found to share false narratives with excessive use of filters and editing. Although, regulation may backfire and lead to censorship, allowing for skewing of information and altering reality. There’s a thin line between the two, and the only solution is finding the right balance. Furthermore, we need to educate teenagers on the reality of social media and provide proper counseling if necessary.
TikTok is a powerful tool and has the strength to make or break our generation, whether for good or bad- only the future will tell, but the present is ours, and we still have the choice to steer in the right direction and utilize the strength of this app, rather than let it corrupt us. The choice is ours.
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