TikTok May or May Not Be a Threat To the Masses

By now the whole world is familiar with TikTok, a social media app that’s been making its rounds through everyone’s phone screens. The app was established in 2016 but rose to fame in 2020 when the pandemic hit and  has been on top since. There was speculation that the Chinese government has the platform to spy on Americans. The Trump administration even threatened to ban the app in the U.S., but in the eleventh hour, this was stopped by the federal courts. 

Some attribute TikTok’s success to the pandemic since the whole world was on lockdown and forced indoors, with little to no entertainment. This is when many young people utilized the platform to keep entertained by making dance videos, remixing popular songs, popularizing reality stars by remaking their favorite scenes, and more. Don’t be mistaken, there were social media apps just like TikTok in the past, but they didn’t stand the test of time. Vine was a very popular apps similar to TikTok, people made short videos reenacting popular viral videos or simply creating their own skits… the gag is you only had under 7-seconds to do so. Eventually, the app was forgotten and people “outgrew” it. Musical.ly also served a similar purpose and was quite trendy with young teens and middle schoolers, but the hype faded until it was later rebranded as what we today know as TikTok. TikTok has only been growing in popularity and shows no signs of slowing down. 

There have been downsides to the rise of TikTok, like how quickly misinformation spreads and the impact this has on consumers. For example, if someone decides to make a one-minute video discussing politics and they’re misinformed but convincing, you can bet that more than half of their followers will adopt the same opinion based on inaccurate information and this is extremely dangerous. Not to mention the influence of cancel culture because of the ability to capture moments in real-time. Funny story, a young woman was at a grocery store and overheard some girls behind her gossiping about one of their ‘friends’. She took to the app to air out everything she’d heard, and the video received millions of views. It even reached the girl whose name was slandered by her fake friends. That’s the power of TikTok. 

TikTok doesn’t appear to be going anywhere any time soon, but the good and bad effects of the app are definitely worth discussing. Many people are now speaking out personally, and attributing their symptoms of ADHD to the app and other social media apps as well. I don’t believe in self-diagnosing, but I can agree that my attention span is much shorter because of the nature of the app and time I spend consuming its content.Because the appeal of the app is to receive entertainment or information within a few seconds to a minute, has become hard for me to sit through a fifteen-minute YouTube video discussing daily news when I can get the same information from a thirty-second TikTok video. Is this an issue that needs to be addressed immediately or the new culture of our generation?