TikTok is slowly killing us all (in spirit)
Social media can be very parasitical. For some, this means it becomes a dependency and a dopamine addiction. TikTok is one of the worst offenders. As a bystander, I have often wondered how it has had such an impact on American culture, so I spent a little over 30 minutes on a new TikTok account and watched the algorithm change. Teenagers in America spend on average two hours daily on TikTok. The vast majority of TikTok sessions end far beyond one’s initial expectations. The app is essentially a black hole, forcibly taking teenagers into a sedentary lifestyle which relies on social media for dopamine to fill absent moments. I had originally decided to stop for 30 minutes, but my curiosity got the best of me. I watched in horror at the terrifying oversaturation of dopamine and disturbing content flashing before me. Corporate leaders of TikTok are aware of this, and yet its monetary benefits, with TikTok currently valued at around $300 billion, outweigh the declining mental health of the average teenager.
TikTok is one of many social media websites with users who normalize trends, i.e., prompts, challenges, or video ideas that spread far beyond their original intention. An example is the Nyquil Chicken challenge, which requires boiling raw chicken in Nyquil, an insomnia prevention drug, and eating it. The consequences of consuming an abundance of the OTC drug Nyquil are severe, including seizures, liver disease, and death. The dark underbelly of TikTok challenges do not often appear on the platform, and to the contrary many people were shown videos of people doing this challenge and not suffering immediate consequences, leaving them ignorant of the concomitant risks of the challenge. This and numerous other challenges take advantage of the risk-tolerant teenage brain to convince people to do potentially harmful activities. Severe injury and death due to these challenges is common. Peer pressure is especially prevalent amongst teenagers, due to their brain development veering more towards social skills without fully developed rational capabilities. Because of this, teens are the vast majority of people who succumb to these dangerous challenges, as well as the harmful effects the platform has on mental health.
A very popular form of interacting with the platform is viewing the For You Page, which is what gets most people addicted to TikTok. The site tracks how long you’ve spent on each TikTok video, how you’ve interacted with it through likes, shares, and comments, and uses that information to figure out what will be most engaging for the user. This is often very effective, as it adapts to the user’s viewing habits. The algorithm will consistently give certain videos that may or may not be relevant to your viewing habits to test their appeal and adjust accordingly. Some people even believe the TikTok algorithm can get to know your personality to a degree of accuracy greater than even one's sense of self. For example, Jess Joho of Mashable reported learning she was bisexual via the TikTok algorithm recommending her more content from LGBTQIA+ creators.
However, there are more disturbing outcomes from TikTok’s algorithm. TikToks concerning morally dubious, depressing, or outright offensive content typically garner more engagement from users. This led to a hashtag known as #sadtok, popularizing the belief that spending a long time on TikTok typically results in more depressing content that can severely affect the user’s mental health in the long term. I have never downloaded TikTok onto my phone or used it for an extended period of time. After creating an account and spending only 30 minutes on the platform, the majority of my feed was filled with disturbing videos, including criminal activity, conspiracy theories, sexual assault, and a discussion of suicide. After falling into this rabbit hole, I noticed that the videos were crafted intentionally to grab my attention, shock me, and intensify a sense of despair. An anonymous testimony from Amnesty International, a non-profit organization that is focused on creating a world where everyone can have human rights, reported that the platform would consistently intensify his feelings when he was depressed, eventually recommending self-harm content. This effect is not an isolated incident. After 5 hours spent on the platform (from a bot user), a majority of videos were related to mental health struggles. TikTok is harmful because it normalizes suicide. The site will not do it intentionally, but the morbid curiosity inherent in humans will cause them to engage more with distressing content, reiterating a cycle of intense emotions solely for potential dopamine release.
Like other forms of addiction, TikTok addiction has multiple stages. It is not a universal experience, but there are many similarities. There are many reasons for starting a new account, mainly stemming from curiosity and the desire to interact with peers via the social aspects of the platform. However, usage may quickly become more devoted to watching large amounts of content during periods of downtime or posting to participate in popular trends. The abundance of dopamine will incur an addiction to the platform. This typically results in the cancellation of social plans or postponing participation in healthier and more fulfilling activities.
For a long period of time, I was addicted to Youtube, particularly its “Shorts” section, devoted to its version of Tiktok’s short form content with a vertical aspect ratio. Occasionally, I felt joy from entertaining videos, but the vast majority of the time, I ended up feeling worse than I did before watching videos, and wishing I hadn’t opened up the platform in the first place. The solution was relatively easy: I deleted Youtube from my phone. Logistically, this did not prevent me from redownloading it or viewing youtube from a different device, but the small impediment it would cause prevented me from doing so. This small extra step forces me to think more deeply about why I want to use Youtube in this situation. I knew for a long time that it was an unhealthy habit, but that short, simple moment of reconsideration saves me from a viewing session that will be detrimental to my mental health.
From the perspective of the teenage mind, TikTok and similar social media platforms are avenues for escapism. They reel you in because they portray a world in which exciting and emotionally heavy events are constantly occurring, and they show you what it would be like to view humanity through an external lens. TikTok addiction is a global phenomenon which has changed popular culture for the worse. It has perpetuated mental health struggles related to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and normalized content production to the extreme.
