8 Reasons why TikTok is Awful

In the past several years, there has been constant debate in some countries about if one of the most popular social media applications in the world right now should be banned.

TikTok, the short-form, endless scroll content juggernaut as of 2023 had 800 million active users, with the app being downloaded on both Google Play and the Appstore more than 2 billion times. (source: enterprisetodayapps)

The platform is formatted so users can upload short videos, anything from dance videos to brief informational snippets. These videos can explode in popularity on the endless scrolling feed of the applications "For You" page. When a user "likes" a video, their feed becomes augmented with similar videos, creating a sort of echo chamber with very little variety. This repetition allows for various subgroups of related interests to form on the website. Many young people also have used this app as a way to generate income and build worldwide fame.

The amount of activity seen on this platform is incredible, most of the users on the application are in their teenage to young adult years and the various trends and activities that are promoted on it have shaped an entire generation. Never before has such mass media been available to a young audience. And with this, as well as other forms of social media, it is already creating great harm.

These are ten reasons why you should skip downloading this app, and although you may be a little strange in the eyes of your friends for not having it, you will thank yourself later.

Reason 8: For the most part, its not educational

No person should rely on social media as a form of education, and most users on TikTok doesn't use the app for this purpose. For those who do however, these platforms are tinted and colored with such numerous amounts of bias and lies that its almost impossible to find actually truthful information.

Ironically enough, most young people nowadays learn of important news events through TikTok, which is scary due to the fact that one media platform has control over an entire population's knowledge of world events and can easily try to persuade these people in different ways.

This is a major red flag, as news sources can game the TikTok algorithm to their advantage and allow for their followers to believe totally fabricated information. Not only this, but foreign adversaries and subversive groups of a given country can also alter narratives and the beliefs of people to change viewpoints and arouse upheaval or division.

Reason 7: It influences an entire generation

As with other popular social media platforms, the majority of TikTok users under the age of 30 which coincides with most of Generation Z and all of Generation Alpha. The impact this one social media app has had on Gen Z and is beginning to have on Gen Alpha is absolutely extraordinary.

Most teens in the Western world but more particularly the United States have the app downloaded and consume it regularly. The modern youth's trends are mostly dictated and promoted through this platform. The various clothing styles, dance moves and media consumed by Gen Z and Gen Alpha either came directly from TikTok or greatly influenced TikTok-like platforms such as Instagram.

The grip TikTok has over the young generations is truly worrisome. There has never been any generation before that has had access to such content and its addictive nature. We have no way of knowing how TikTok will shape the functionality of Gen Z and the generations following it in the working world and government itself, as well as how Zoomers will raise their own children. The many mental health and social issues caused by social media and how they have affected these recent generations raise uncertain questions on what state the world will be. Inevitably, at some point Gen Z will have to step up and manage the world's affairs.

For those who actively resist surrendering to using the platform, they are totally disconnected from the activities of their generation. This creates a harmful social pressure for people who don't want to use TikTok being forced to eventually comply and download it, allowing them to become controlled by its addictive features. The website acts as almost a black hole, where nothing can avoid being eventually sucked in one way or another.

This single social media application will end up defining a generation if not multiple with its influence on society expanding as TikTok's audience increases in age group.

Reason 6: It promotes disinformation

Adding onto the element of education and TikTok, the platform is a fantastic medium for learning about the world. However, due to its mostly unregulated nature, information can easily be twisted and lied about. Even more so, the reinforcing nature of the TikTok algorithm compounds similar videos into your feed to further strengthen false claims and beliefs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when TikTok use was skyrocketing due to social isolation; fake medical advice went rampant across the application. Users began to believe that garlic could cure the virus with no substantial scientific backing, and there was also a frenzy on the website that 5G cellular towers caused cancer. These few instances of the many multitude of misinformation that circulates almost totally unregulated on the platform makes it a very clear danger for the public.

Additionally, amidst the current crises in Ukraine and Israel, as well as the escalating political polarization in the United States there has been a stark amount of political disinformation or propaganda on the platform too. Conspiracy theories about groups as well as bogus ideas such as the world being flat and the Moon Landings being faked were also being promoted by unverified users.

The lack of responsibility demonstrated by TikTok administrators on their platform for how media and information is being spread totally discredits any material promoting ideas and other beliefs on the application. Most users blindly support such fallacies that have no scientific or evident proof of them being truthful.

Reason 5: It makes you follow trends a bit too much

Trends are a natural part of society. Someone makes a fad out of something and people begin doing the same thing. For the most part, the trends on TikTok are harmless with most of them just being different dances and clothing choices. However, when people on TikTok do things that attract a lot of attention on the platform, such as a really stupid challenge or simply faking how they behave, it causes a mimicking effect upon users following them, causing short epidemics of dangerous trends that could cause the harm or injury of many people.

Notable examples of this include the tide pod challenge, when users in 2018 ate laundry detergent pods that resulted in them being poisoned. A more recent dangerous trend in 2021 was the "devious licks" challenge which saw teens tear out urinals and soap dispensers from school and public bathrooms, leading to countless arrests and charges of vandalism. TikTok fortunately did take measures to take down videos inciting these activities, but by that point it was already too late.

Another contagious trend on the platform occurred when users began experiencing tourette syndrome-like tics as a result of repeatedly watching videos of people that actually had tics. This is an example of how a TikTok trend could easily become a psychological epidemic, which goes to show how much of an impact these short-videos can have on people.

Reason 4: Its hypersexualizing your mind

TikTok is a revolutionary form of self-expression. People have the ability to video tape themselves doing mostly whatever they want for validation. Because of this, young girls have taken their natural advantage of being appealing to male audiences to do provocative dances in exposing clothes.

The average guy on TikTok is probably fed a diet of girls shaking their bodies in strange and seductive ways while scrolling, in what could only be described as "soft pornography." This poses a direct threat to men's health, as they see so many different women each day that sexually stimulates them to do various morally-degrading actions. They get to become totally obsessed with sex, making it hard for them to find quality women to date or get no women at all because of their perversion.

The girls posting these videos receive approval for their videos, and over time become more and more suggestive to garner more attention from their mostly male audience. This leads to harmful effects equally as bad as what the men are experiencing, as innocent teenage girls are pressured into following different trends and becoming more sexually provocative in order to fit in.

Despite all of this, the scariest part is that young girls, some as early as 11 or 12 years old have begun doing these dances, and there are a vast multitude of perverted adult men on TikTok as well. Daughters of good fathers and mothers are dancing for potential pedophiles right behind their backs.

Reason 3: It's probably some sort of mass manipulation

The parent company of TikTok is the Chinese firm ByteDance, and it has came under repeated scrutiny in recent years for its ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which Western governments fear is stealing information from its citizens. TikTok executives have constantly denied these allegations, however it remains unclear if they are truthful or not.

In the case that TikTok does take user information, then the Chinese Communist Party has a wide database on millions of Westerners. The biggest issue is that the algorithm can easily be tweaked to manipulate the political opinions of users through slight changes of videos they receive. The algorithm probably already does this, and promotes the spread of disinformation and factionalization to cause tribalistic behaviors in Western audiences.

One way to confirm the theory that the Chinese government could be influencing the behaviors of the Western youth is that TikTok in China, known as Douyin, has many CCP-backed propaganda videos promoting Chinese advancement and nationalism. This contrasts with Western TikTok, which mostly consists of random dances, funny videos and borderline sexual content. The children of China are watching TikToks about strengthening their country, while Western kids sit around watching videos for less than five seconds with dysfunctional dopamine receptors.

The younger generations act as a gateway to either future success or failure, and it seems clear that China is steering itself towards a bright destiny while the US and the rest of the world degrade and degenerate.

Reason 2: It wastes your time

The continuous scrolling feature of TikTok makes it a gargantuan time-wasting activity. Millions of teenagers across the world spend hours a day flicking their screens watching thousands of videos most of the time they never actually finish. Most of them don't even know they're screwing their minds up while doing it.

After each TikTok you look at, the more and more you scroll. A cycle where you just can't put your device down to get up and complete a task. Minutes turn into hours, before you either actually have to stop watching or need to go to sleep. There is one reason for this, and that is dopamine.

Dopamine is the natural chemical in your brain responsible for fulfillment for being rewarded. It is the chemical that causes addiction. The euphoria from smoking, drugs, vaping and even eating unhealthy foods is caused by this one compound in your body.

Scrolling on TikTok induces this chemical to be secreted in your brain, making you feel happy. Each funny new video you see, dopamine shoots through your mind. It is supposed to increase and decrease, but this is not the case for short-form content. Each video you watch, more dopamine is released, exhausting the receptors retrieving the chemical. To give the receptors a break a little bit, less and less dopamine is produced the more the dopamine-inducing activity is done.

As a result, the frying of the dopamine receptors injure them and make them weaker as the activity is repetitively done through an addictive cycle. Over time, scrolling becomes merely a habit and not fun at all. Ostensively, this directly harms your motivation and causes persistent procrastination.

Nothing will be achieved in a world where no one is motivated from destroyed dopamine receptors. That is why TikTok and social media in general pose such a threat to the future of humankind, as no new projects or advancements will be completed or innovated.

Reason 1: You can't escape it

The biggest threat that TikTok poses is that it has seeped into every major social media platform right now. Short-form content, because it profits off of attention is among the most lucrative ways other social media companies can monopolize on users.

Facebook and Instagram have what are known as "Reels," Snapchat has "Spotlight" and YouTube has "Shorts." The videos shown on these are mostly recycled TikToks reposted to these different social media platforms respectively. Through this TikTok technically expands its audience to millions of more people who become equally as addicted to the short-form media as regular TikTok users are.

This makes TikTok a viral contagion across the Internet and is nearly unavoidable unless you consciously isolate yourself from short-form content. It has infected all social media in some way or another and it will only keep growing in popularity and overall notoriety.

Conclusions

Society has became normalized to this attention-sucking and cheap form of entertainment revolutionized by TikTok. It has grasped every aspect of modern culture through various trends and media. TikTok is undoubtedly one of the most successful business models ever invented, making attention an even more valuable commodity.

Attention as a resource can quickly be exploited by dangerous actors in many mischievous ways. You can follow this advice or not, but TikTok is a seemingly innocent threat that should be taken with a grain of salt.