TikTok as a Double - Edged Sword

One thing has remained by our side through this traumatic year, Tiktok.

One thing has remained by our side through this traumatic year, TikTok. This wonderful but potentially harmful app has seen a boom over quarantine. It’s been my lord and saviour. This genius app ranges from nonsensical videos, to political revolution, to fashion advice, to fan culture, to tackling body shaming and back to comedy in a matter of scrolls. However, TikTok is very much a double-edged sword. At face value we see what most people perceive TikTok as: the hilarious videos that any teen could quote, videos that spread positive messages of body positivity and political awareness and of course, most importantly- the dances. That’s not even the beginning. TikTok has a plethora of hypnotising content to satisfy anyone who has an account, and an algorithm that hooks you immediately as you scroll intently awaiting the next 10 seconds. You scroll and scroll…and scroll- you laugh and cry and ponder- and scroll again. Your splintering attention span clutches onto each video you swipe onto; addictive is an understatement. The contents of your for you page is solely consistent of videos related to things you have liked; every single video you see will be entertaining to you. It is terrifyingly easy to spend hours at a time on this app. Before you know it the whole evening is gone, it’s 2am and you have achieved nothing apart from temporary entertainment. The obvious problem of addiction is stellar; however, the problems don’t stop there.

A dark side of TikTok exits and is horrifyingly prominent: a side where predatory men target young girls just doing a fun dance, where people are brave enough to show their insecurities and are only met with malice, and many disturbing videos that have gone viral for all the wrong reasons. Yet another issue is the clear silencing of POC and other marginalised creators who attempt to speak up on important issues. TikTok is extremely good at distraction- whether it be tearing you away from your homework or distracting the general population from the inequalities that POC have been trying to bring up for years. The concept of ‘shadow banning’ is taboo, some people have been banned for advocating for political issues which is of course immoral. Yet videos spreading hate speech remain. Many people are seeing a repetition of 2012 Tumblr within TikTok, which can be interesting- musical.ly became TikTok in 2018 and was immediately flooded with gamers, artists, fandoms andthere’s no better way to say it- nerds (myself included). Frankly, it was cringe. From 2018-2019 you had to hide the TikTok app on your home screen because of its awkward connotations. Many people see summer 2019 as TikTok’s heyday- all the trends were hilarious, the community were all likeminded people, and it was still a secret.

And then, Covid-19 happened. The world stopped. People needed a new fixation to pass the time and suddenly, everyone was on TikTok. There were people making fulltime careers out of it, it became the social media of choice for promoting anything, it was astoundingly funny- it was new. Very suddenly this cringe app morphed into the giant it is now, with 6 million active users. But with the increase in popularity came all the same things that those dreaded Tumblr years were known for: mental illness romanticisation, toxic fan culture, disturbing and unhealthy trends, bullying, glamourising eating disorders, scarily prominent predatory behaviour and more. It’s terrifying, but inevitable. It’s not just TikTok, social media as a whole is not and has never been healthy. But social media is the future, it’s a damaging creation but it will never go away now that the whole human race is addicted.

As I’m writing this article and completely slamming the idea of social media, I have checked my phone multiple times…so maybe I’m a hypocrite, and just a by-product of this social media obsessed society. I witness the damaging effects of TikTok daily and yet I cannot tear myself away from it. Of course it’s damaging, but I’ll be damned if it’s not funny as hell. There have been too many times where I have turned to TikTok for comfort during this hellish year, it’s been a life saver. To be frank I think a lot of us would have gone completely mad without it. So, as we can all see TikTok is a bit of a double-edged sword, but it’s got a lot of redeeming qualities. Including allowing content that people have no other outlet for, giving people voices, making us laugh and creating so many pop culture references that we will be able to quote like Vines for years. Along with it being a bit dodgy, anyone who downloads it will see that it is a great source of entertainment, and during this pandemic TikTok has been an amazing way to bring peoples spirits up even if its just a silly little video.

Written by Elizabeth McCay

Photography by Hattie Nicholas