China's Potential Influence
If you're China. And you wanted to disrupt another country, wouldn't you reward the dumbest possible on that app. For TikTok today has become one of the most popular social media platforms in the world due to its massive number of followers. The reason for this rising popularity is due to unique, trendy and somewhat controversial content available on the app and the opportunity to imitate which has made many of them the so-called TikTok Stars. But in the recent past, TikTok has landed in hot waters due to many controversies revolving around it from dangerous online challenges, negative impact on mental health to spreading false and misleading content. Now let's find out how TikTok is actually making you dumber.
The Top TikTok Stars
The top 4 TikTok accounts in the world are Charli D'Amelio, Khaby Lame, Bella Poarch, and Addison Rae. Which of these four create original, meaningful and beneficial content? That's right, zero. That's the current state of TikTok, the place where literally shaking your hand and folding your arms gets you billions of views where dance trends and silly faces, meaning get all the attention. A place where the dumb rule and the intellectuals are pushed to the side, first launched in September 2016, the social media app created by ByteDance, TikTok has shot up in popularity within the last few years.
TikTok's Rise in the Social Media World
Today, TikTok is the third largest social media app in the world, only behind the two meta companies Instagram and Facebook. At this moment in time, it seems as though everyone is aware of the problems with Mark Zuckerberg and his companies. However, not many people apply the same level of scrutiny to TikTok, perhaps because they're more attached to it. Because it's a product of their generation. If for some reason you live under a rock and you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, well, here's a bit of an introduction.
A Brief Introduction to TikTok
TikTok is a social media app that's primarily used for sharing short vertical videos with others on the app. The app has gained in popularity in recent years, especially among teenagers and young adults. The main selling point of this app is that the videos are short and sweet, just like fast food. This brings me to my first big problem with TikTok. TikTok is like fast food. TikTok is designed to be consumed quickly and without much thought, without even owning an account. You can literally hop into the app and within minutes the algorithm will start feeding you with videos it knows you'll enjoy. Without regard for whether it's healthy for you or not, it's the fast food of the social media world.
TikTok: The Fast Food of Social Media
Just like how McDonald's sells you a quick and easy meal that you can consume on-the-go, TikTok sells you short videos that you can consume quickly and without much effort. The videos on TikTok are short. In fact, the shorter the better. Some creators have recently come out on the platform, citing the fact that it appears that the algorithm is starting to aggressively push 7-second videos and this does not come as a surprise to anyone on the outside looking in.
The Impact on Attention Spans
The app is designed to reduce the collective attention span of the next generation; kids who grow up watching 7-second videos on their smartphones quickly start to think that that's how fast life is and should be. They'll no longer have the patience to sit through a one-hour lecture on an important subject, or even consume more boring but important content like news coverage, political debates and the like. We're literally raising a generation who think that if it cannot fit in a 60-second video, then it's not worth their time. That is a scary future to think about.
Encouraging the Dumbing Down of Society
TikTok is turning us into a generation of idiots. If TikTok was only just reducing our attention span then maybe it would have been fine, but the reality is much worse. You see, TikTok is actively encouraging the dumbing down of our society. The app is built on a concept known as Infinite Scroll. This means that once you start watching videos on TikTok, the app will keep feeding you with more and more videos one after the other in an endless loop. You can easily spend hours on the app without even realizing it, and the longer you stay on the app, the dumber you become. Why? Because the app literally encourages people to act dumber.
Dangerous Trends: The Milk Crate Challenge
In August 2021, people started stacking milk crates like steps and someone would climb up to the top and back down on the other side. It was called the Milk Crate Challenge. The challenge went viral on TikTok with people across the globe trying to outdo each other by stacking more and more crates. The problem is milk crates are not meant to be stacked that high, and certainly people aren't meant to be climbing them. Sadly, some people had to pay with their lives before the entire world of TikTok realized the madness they'd created. And that's just one of the many dangerous, stupid, and dumb things that the app promotes.
The Difference Between TikTok and Douyin
Just search up TikTok challenge on YouTube and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. The scariest thing about all of this is that it only happens on TikTok and not on Douyin, the Chinese version of the app. The difference with TikTok in China: They say that to understand the correct use of a thing, you have to take a look at its origin. So why don't we take a trip to China to see what TikTok actually is?
Douyin’s Focus on Education and Innovation
In China, TikTok is called Douyin and it might as well be a completely different app because Douyin and TikTok couldn't be more opposite. While TikTok promotes nonsensical videos, memes, and stupid challenges, Douyin promotes videos of engineering marvels, inspiring stories, and educational content. The app is designed to make you think not to keep you glued to your phone like a zombie. It encourages their kids to fall in love with tech and engineering to boost their productivity and expand their thinking capacity. Douyin was literally made to make Chinese kids smarter.
Global Impact and Control Through TikTok
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has sent the complete opposite to the other parts of the world, so that while its children are getting smarter, the rest of the world is getting dumber. It's no wonder that countries like India and Iran have banned the app completely. They understand how the Chinese government can use TikTok to control the thoughts and opinions of the next generation using this app. Because the algorithm provides you with all the content, you don't even get a say in what you decide to watch.
Algorithm-Driven Echo Chambers
So the Chinese Government can literally tailor what you see until your For You page becomes an echo chamber, only showing you content that agrees with the worldview they want you to have. This is a scary future to think about, and it's exactly what China through TikTok is doing to the rest of the world. Now here's the challenge, not the TikTok challenge, but the real challenge. What do we actually do about TikTok? Governments across the globe are struggling to figure out how to deal with TikTok, but at the end of the day, it's up to us the users to decide what we want to do with the app.
Making Better Choices on TikTok
We can choose to use TikTok like China wants us to, and let the app turn us into dumber versions of ourselves. Or we can use TikTok to educate ourselves to make ourselves better people, and to fight against the tide of stupidity that the app is promoting. I see accounts like Hank Green teaching and trying to stop the spread of misinformation on the app. If we the users can show our support to these types of people instead of stupid dances and challenges, then maybe we can make a difference.
Setting Boundaries and Balancing Our Time
We also need to be careful about how much time we spend on the app. Just because it has some educational content doesn't mean that we should be using it for hours on end. It's important to balance out our use of the app with other activities like reading, studying, and socializing. Go outside, touch some grass, and stop living in a fantasy world designed by an algorithm.
Source:
Unfold. (2022, November 10). How TikTok is Secretly Making You Dumber [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqq60JMJ3wM