The Psychology of TikTok
In the morning as I wake up from my alarm, the first thing I do is check my phone (I’m not proud of it) and I have a little scroll on social media to see what the world has been up to as I was sleeping. I’m able to quickly catch up on the latest news from the warmth of my bed thanks to social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. I happen to be one of the billion users on TikTok, a still relatively new but increasingly popular social media app among the younger generations as 63% of users are under 30.
What keeps us mindlessly scrolling? TikTok is unique in that its algorithm takes your data and learns about you it tailors your page to content it think’s you’ll enjoy. TikTok can pretty quickly learn your political leaning, your age, music taste and interests, and then continue to show you a never-ending stream of content that you’ll enjoy. This can influence the things we buy, watch and even listen too. The pros and cons list for this is long, but more on this later.
Why is TikTok so addictive? In an article by Forbes, they describe TikTok as ‘digital crack cocaine’ and when you look at the psychology, they are not wrong. When you’re on TikTok and something you like this causes a dopamine rush in the brain. This is known as the reward pathway and the dopamine neurotransmitter makes us feel pleasure. Gradually our brain begins to associate TikTok with pleasure from this dopamine hit. Our brains can learn to anticipate this and even reward us pre-emptively, this creates a dopamine loop and makes us want to seek out more of what gives us this dopamine release. This is like the effect of drugs and gambling on our brains, and it demonstrates how TikTok really is addictive.
What are the consequences of this? Given this information about addictive behaviours its clear there are many negatives to TikTok. Firstly, people have reported a shorter attention span due to the content on TikTok being around 30 seconds long, this impacts their ability to concentrate on work or school.
The algorithm, which is designed to give us content we are interested in, can also reinforce negative things. It’s very easy to get onto a stream of content that includes misogyny, racism and other harmful mindsets, and if you are interacting with this content the algorithm will continue to show you more. This can introduce problematic ideas to young people which they then start to take offline into the real world.
Furthermore, social media has always been prominent in causing issues with body dissatisfaction and poor self-esteem particularly with young girls and TikTok can reinforce this. We can be prone to comparing ourselves to people we see on social media when a 30 second video is often not truthful of their lives. Additionally, there is a lot of diet-culture content and negative stigmas surrounding people of different body types. Higher rates of anxiety and depression have also been associated with TikTok use in comparison to individuals who don’t use the app as much.
However, with every negative of social media there is always a positive. TikTok is a really good way to see people with similar interests to your own. There is also so much positive content on TikTok where people share mental health tips, baking recipes, and even language learning. With so many people sharing their stories, this allows for a discussion of mental health, body image and social issues to be widely spread among young people and can reassure them that they are alone in their struggles. I often find fashion and makeup content as I’m scrolling through TikTok, and I’ve gotten many study tips and book recommendations from it too.
Overall, it’s clear with any social media that there will be negative effects but there are ways this can be reduced. TikTok guidelines aim to get rid of hateful content and they can also ban accounts to stop the spread of misinformation. We can also be mindful about how long we spend on social media and what content we are consuming. Something that helps me is setting timers on my phone apps so I can only use TikTok for a period during the day, this helps to focus on work that needs to get done.
Thank you for reading and I hope this had provided some insight into how social media can be addictive.
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