Thoughts on Tik Tok (aka should it be banned)

[Lensing]

That´s maybe a language thing from my site or I should have written what I mean with anonymity.
I mean that people don´t talk to each other anymore and don´t meet in real life. I think that´s a horrible
side effect of social media

[TheLemmaLlama]

Ah, gotcha It would be nice to have non-in-person methods of communication that doesn't displace in-person methods of communication (though tbh I feel like only interactions that didn't need to be in-person got displaced (I still like in-person stuff that can't really be done the same way online, like board games), but I'm probably biased :'D)

[VibrantFox]

idk if it puts me in a minority but i feel like its less a platform issue and more a personal issue. if kids are doing dumb things or attention spans are suffering then why not actively engage those folks and find ways to change that

like we cant deny the fact that for some parenting has shifted from talking to a child playing with toys and taking them out places like the park or the library to passing them and ipad and going "here play with that". so sure by 5 or 6 a child has a good level of basic technical literacy but like what about engaging socially with other kids, communicating and forming interpersonal connections.

as for teen years i think teenagers just do dumb things coz that when there a bit more freedom from parents and ability to make more decisions independently and sometimes there dumb as heck like eating tide pods, suffocating on spoonfuls of cinnamon or whatever else. the only difference between now and when some of us were younger is its gone from small friend/peer groups and whatever social pressure existed there to big social platforms (tiktok and other social media included)

as for information spread on these platforms, again it can happen anywhere, good or bad, helpful or harmful and so on. like chain emails still exist, spam is right there, heck facebook.

like i curate the hell out of most of the online places im actively a part of if possible so a good chunk of negatives i see people point out pertaining to social media i tend to miss unless its brought up someplace else and its always so strange to me coz im like are people not also modifying their feeds so they dont have to see those things or are they just leaving things be (which why is that the perceivable norm? genuinely)

like for once im impartial but i dont think outright banning whole social media sites/apps is going to fix the worlds problems or things wrong with individual people ┐⁠(⁠‘⁠～⁠`⁠;⁠)⁠┌

[smokesalty]

Yeah, TikTok is a dumpsterfire.

But honestly, I still enjoy having the app. Usually I find recipes I never knew existed, funny content and art inspiration. But the app is also draining at the same time, with everyone wanting to be right in every situation (even for topics that are nuanced and don't always have a clear right or wrong side!) There's a side to the app (similar to twitter) that love having arguments and being on their high horse that pisses me off, I'm just there for fun content.

And there are plenty of trends that I roll my eyes at, but at this point I don't know how much you can avoid dumb trends online. If you wanna set your house on fire forms dumb trend, that's on you.

I personally want the app to stay, since it is also one of my main social mediasthat I can market my comic to to a large audience. Making videos is fun and simple, and I have mutuals and fans I love chatting to in the comments. it really has helped my comic grow, so honestly I personally want it to stay.

[NellieVP318]

f they're telling the truth and make a significant portion of mentally ill onlookers afraid to talk about their experiences in both cases.

Not do go off topic a bit, but this is a very good point. I don't think it's a good idea to assume some of kids may be faking their disability. Granted there are people who do that. From what I learned, going after "disability fakers" harms disabled and people with legit mental illness. It's not anyone's responsibility to go after and decide who is faking it. It doesn't help the disabled/mental ill community who want to talk about their issues online in one of few spaces they have.

However, that doesn't excuse Tik Tok to be unhealthy and harmful to teens . But its not the first social media to glamorize mental illness. When I used to be on Tumblr per-nudity ban, there was kinda like that so it's not just a Tik Tok thing. Banning Tik Tok would be pointless because other social media sites do have the same issues.

[KennethLopezJr921]

Maybe some of them are, but I can see people actually having mental illnesses and wanting to talk about it, but not being able to bring themselves to be serious since they worry about being 'whiny' or 'angsty', so they decide to opt for 'cute and quirky' instead.

The point is if they talk about their issues in a way that's entertaining to others, they're not a burden because they're giving other people something positive in exchange for the attention and validation they're seeking.

In that context, I don't have a problem with that. In general, I don't have an issue with people sharing their experiences online and I know people will make light on their situation not to downplay or insult it but more to take some weight of their shoulders, and to help others cope with their situation. That Im fine with. My only issue comes when someone doesnt have any mental illnesses and glamorize in a way that doesn't genuine. As in they're just trying to get attention and I get that has less to do with tik tok and more with kids just doing anything to get attention. But that doesn't make it right imo for these kids to be doing it online, especially since it an come off as insulting to people who have for example adhd or depression, especially if its not sincere.

[KennethLopezJr921]

You did bring up a good point but I don't think its permanent. My generation is basically the first one to have grown up around social media (and Millennials too to some extent) so when the time comes for us to have children, we'll already know the downsides of social media and prevent it from affecting our children in the same way it effected us. Personally, I don't think kids under the age of 13 or 14 should have access to phones or social media. In fact, I dont think parents should drop their ipads in front of their kids and let youtube baby sit them but thats another story. Speaking from personal experience, I didnt have a cell phone until I was 12 and I didnt have proper social media access till I was 15. I watched youtube and that was about it. And I turned out okay! I didn't need a cell phone or an Instagram account to make me a better person and Im pretty sure I would've been fine without it!

What Im saying is that just because social media fucked us, it doesn't mean we wont let it fuck the next generation of kids and teens

[KennethLopezJr921]

I didnt actually think of that but you're right. In general, it really does boil down to how parents raise their children and less to do with social media. Im hoping my generation wont make the same mistakes as our parents did when we have children since we'll already know the negative effects of social media.

I'll be first to admit that my dislike of tiktok is partially fueled by bias along with recognizing its negative effects

[KennethLopezJr921]

Also, just so i dont come off as faking information, the "tricking vulnerable kids into thinking they do have a mental disability" comes from a video I watched earlier where teenage girls were developing tics from tik tok videos via mass hysteria I did look up to see if it was an actually thing I found a couple of articles about the same topic. I'll like both the video and one of the articles below. Take it with a grain of salt:
TikTok Is Causing A Mass Psychosis
Why Is TikTok Giving Teen Girls Tics?

[TheLemmaLlama]

My only issue comes when someone doesnt have any mental illnesses and glamorize in a way that doesn't genuine. As in they're just trying to get attention and I get that has less to do with tik tok and more with kids just doing anything to get attention. But that doesn't make it right imo for these kids to be doing it online, especially since it an come off as insulting to people who have for example adhd or depression, especially if its not sincere.

And I guess my problem with that is; it's not always possible to tell who's sincere and who isn't. There are people who are really struggling but worry about whether they're just faking it, because they see other people constantly doubt the sincerity of people who claim to have mental illnesses. I think the cost of misidentifying a genuine person as faking is greater than the benefit of correctly identifying a faker as faking.

Also, just so i dont come off as faking information, the "tricking vulnerable kids into thinking they do have a mental disability" comes from a video I watched earlier where teenage girls were developing tics from tik tok videos via mass hysteria I did look up to see if it was an actually thing I found a couple of articles about the same topic. I'll like both the video and one of the articles below. Take it with a grain of salt:TikTok Is Causing A Mass PsychosisWhy Is TikTok Giving Teen Girls Tics?

Thanks for the info! I'm not sure if the impact on the kids is a function of how sincere the material was though ... and in that case, it's always gonna be a difficult question. We want people to talk abut their experiences, but it can also have very real harmful effects to real people. It's hard to know where to draw the line (e.g. we don't want people who have self harmed to be ashamed of their scars, but seeing them could be triggering for other vulnerable people)

[powerplantanimations]

The thing about this is what platform would they have to go on to? The closest thing the United States had was Vine and that's dead. They even tried resurrecting that with Vine 2 and that didn't go well. YouTube Shorts is on YouTube which means more restrictions. I guess Instagram with Facebook just going for the throat, but people don't trust Facebook either.

Twitter's a joke right now despite people still going on that.

On TikTok you can get away with showing stuff that's borderline nudity. I deleted the app because of how graphic things were I was like "HOLY... this is bad even for me". Sure teenagers are going to be self-destructive and there may be something worse over the horizon, but I'd be glad if TikTok gets the axe.

I GUESS maybe another country would take a stab at it.

[ar-ninetysix]

Where there's a will, there's a way, man.

People will comb through guidelines to see what they can get away with, devs will add restrictions and rules once there's enough outcry or else it just starts making the platforms look bad, and then people find loopholes in the new rules, etc.. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Twitch.. it doesn't really matter where they go. As much as I wanna believe otherwise, teens will always have the capacity to create toxic corners on the internet whether it's intentional or not

[VibrantFox]

I think it's also worth noting in these cases that teens aren't the only ones exclusively making, posting or sharing certain brands of content but they're a relevant demographic to point fingers at I guess 乁(ツ)ㄏ

[ar-ninetysix]

Oh absolutely, but like this post is mainly focused on teens so I just based my comments off of that, adults and younger kids can be jerks too

[abigaillmartin]

My immediate social media site I thought of was Tumblr regarding this glamorizing mental illness. It’s honestly nothing new, people have been romanticizing the artist for having their mental illness as their source of creativity which is a topic on itself but it’s also quite damaging and dangerous.

[powerplantanimations]

I'm still looking at it from a vine point of view since a lot of those stars just... faded away. They couldn't adapt to YouTube or whatever. I remember my favorite vine star who actually had punchlines just being wiped from the face of the Earth because even HE couldn't change. We'll see tho.

[abigaillmartin]

Thomas Saunders anyone? he’s hilarious what happened with Vine anyway?

[KennethLopezJr921]

From what I remember, Vine's parent company Twitter axed it because the app wasn't making any money. Plus a lot of people, including myself, would only watch vines outside of the app like on YouTube via vine compilations. So they saw no use for it.

My immediate social media site I thought of was Tumblr regarding this glamorizing mental illness. It’s honestly nothing new, people have been romanticizing the artist for having their mental illness as their source of creativity which is a topic on itself but it’s also quite damaging and dangerous.

Glad you brought that up because I failed to mention that specific point in my op post. I remember seeing one tumblr post romanticizing depression and suicide and that was just.......yikes...just yikes. As someone who has had depression, I can tell you there is nothing beautiful or 'cute' about it. It's because of that that I don't like it when people try to take mental illnesses and like cutesify them. It just doesn't sit well with me :(.

[ar-ninetysix]

I guarantee you Tumblr posts like the one you mentioned are more common than you might think..

Speaking on my behalf, I remember seeing many posts back then glorifying and romanticizing depression, eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia), overdosing, suicidal ideation, self-harming. This came about through my interest in post-hardcore bands, the general community surrounding the bands weren't all that happy with life so there were other communities to identify with, let's just say that.. early 2010's emo/scene kids were in deep with mental health issues, myself included.

There's the people that needed an outlet by making black and white image posts with poetry.. (If you were to Google "tumblr depression", and go to Images.. that's exactly what you'd find.) Then there's the people that identified with the content and its general vibes. It was never really brought into question whether or not it was fake- everyone was so focused on needing to know that they weren't alone in their struggles that its legitimacy didn't matter. They were being understood anyways and seeing other users relate to it. The authenticity was found in everyone else's reactions.

All of the topics I mentioned have since been sorta blacklisted on Tumblr with the exception of specific tags that get past the blacklisting. Essentially, a lot of the content was tolerated on the platform but hidden away, as opposed to having it all be removed. Unfortunately, as I understand it, all this stuff is apparently easy to find on TikTok as well.

The fact that those communities have had a resurgence there does not surprise me in the slightest. If there's another platform that ends up becoming as big as TikTok, there's a good chance this stuff will show up there too, just slipping by under the radar. Bypassing any active measures that were taken to ensure that the topics wouldn't appear again.

This is exactly why I don't think banning TikTok would do much. The underlying sources of the mental health issues you're concerned about aren't gonna be fixed by deleting some app and/or changing the way it works

[VibrantFox]

i havent got much to add onto this discussion but i stumbled onto this tumblr post and it immediately reminded me of the thread but the tags specifically i think are worth reflecting on

cripple punk

knowing how access to disability (or rather disability benefits) in the us is a nightmare i literally think that "fakers" are really a non issue and there are other more pressing concerns in regards to the whole tiktok issue and there are likely better ways to mitigate it's faults than outright banning the app

datamining is something that can be stopped or at least limited by more prominent data protection laws (tho the likelihood of such a thing being put in place is limited due to the govts use of said collected data not just elsewhere but in the us is huge and people will forever protect their profits) but other things like attention spans and harmful trends will really just boil down to personal education and sometimes people just have to learn things the hard way even if consequences are potentially severe