By Julia Kemp
The immensely popular social media platform, TikTok, has grown in influence since its release in 2016, with the site now hosting over one billion users each month. With TikTok users spanning across the globe, the consequences and detriments of TikTok are now coming into view. Though TikTok does have its benefits, the platform is detrimental to the health of teenagers, and you need to delete the app as soon as possible.
TikTok has encompassed the lives of teens across the world. Young teens scroll through short videos, ranging from 15 seconds to 3 minutes, for hours and hours each day. As a result, the average attention span of young people has plummeted since TikTok’s release. Before TikTok, when YouTube and Netflix were teens’ choices of entertainment, videos and television shows were at least 15 minutes to an hour long. Teen’s attention spans were already shrinking, with many reporting that books or long discussions in school were hard to pay attention to. Now, with TikTok consuming the screen time of youths, the attention span has shrunk farther, with many students now saying that even a movie or TV show becomes taxing, and many continue to use TikTok while consuming other forms of entertainment. Short attention spans impact the way that teens communicate with friends and family, and also the way that teens are able to have educational discussions and learn at school. According to a nationally representative study of 2,658 US children ages 8 to 18 years old, students’ test grades drop 0.12 points for every 90 minutes they spend above the average 100 minutes spent on TikTok. TikTok impacts teens’ ability to focus, therefore leading to poor performance in school and an inability to have meaningful conversations with friends and family.
Unique to TikTok is the “FYP,” or “for you page.” TikTok studies the videos that users interact with; whether they like, comment, or share, TikTok enters the video into their database. Then, TikTok’s formula sorts videos that the user enjoys and shows only the videos in that category. This formula creates a recipe for disaster: TikTok becomes more and more addictive the more that a user watches. TikTok becomes an obsession for young teens—a never-ending source of entertainment that will never fail to provide you with the perfectly amusing video that is finely chosen for you. One huge consequence of the FYP is that it leads to a very secluded and one-sided circle. If you have TikTok, you might be aware of the many political forms that TikToks can take. Now, this might seem like a plus; teens are able to gain knowledge about social issues and political changes through an app that they are on constantly. However, due to TikTok’s specified formula for users, teens only see one side of the argument. TikTok’s FYP perpetuates the gap between sides of the political spectrum. Many people have become extremely disdainful of differing opinions and perspectives because their FYP creates a space where their perspective is the only correct one, and the other side is humorous or incorrect. Overall, TikTok’s FYP creates a space for addiction to videos that are perfectly chosen for users and creates a secluded circle that shows users what they want to see, not what actually exists.
Overall, TikTok is extremely detrimental to the attention spans of young teens, and the platform creates a system by which users can align with a particular viewpoint and have their viewpoint instilled in them without the ability to see differing opinions. My solution to these detriments: delete the app. A simple click of a button and teens would see an exponential increase in attention span, educational success, strength of relationships, and immersion in diverse opinions.