What's all the news about TikTok?
Since the recent headlines have put TikTok on the hot seat, kids, more so than parents, have been asking me if I think their parents are going to take away their accounts. I have wanted to write about my concerns about this app for a while and now seems like as good of a time as any to share with parents what the dangers and concerns are that I have with the app.
First, anything that is this popular with kids, teens and young adults should raise some flags. How is this one app so addicting? Why do kids walk around TikTokking all day long even when they aren't staring at their screens?
I am going to outline for you the things that go on in this app so you can make a decision for yourself if you think your child is ready and should be exposed to what is on there.
1. Challenges- every few weeks or so there are viral challenges that kids want to get in on. This means that even in a digital world, children feel pressured or compelled to try dangerous things like the outlet challenge(think chargers and pennies in wall outlets) or the skull breaker challenge (this is just as it sounds, your feet get kicked out from under you and you land on your head) or the cereal challenge (where one person gets cereal and milk poured into their mouth while lying down to be a human bowl for another).
2. Sexually explicit messages- sometimes in a matter of minutes, videos will start getting sexual comments and male followers. This can simply be yet another platform for child predators to groom children. When children ignore these comments they can then be threatened by comments such as, I will find you, I will come to your school. Sometimes the messages also instruct the children how to dance or what to wear making children even more vulnerable.
3. Adult content/profanity/suggestive clothing and dancing- there are countless stories of men masturbating or doing other inappropriate things under innocent hashtags so that kids stumble upon them. Further, younger kids are looking up to older teens who are wearing suggestive clothing, dancing in sexualized ways and signing along to rap songs using racial slang and other curse words.
4. Spam accounts- basically these are accounts that kids create in order to post things they really want to and not have their parents follow them. So, they will have their seemingly innocent, cute account but then they create a spam account so that they can do more inappropriate things on a public account.
5. Hashtags- kids like to follow trending hashtags and sometimes they can encourage kids to make poor choices or they spell them in different ways so as to not be caught as easily. It can be a quickly changing landscape of this app and most parents can't keep up. I have had teens tell me they have witnessed cutting, drinking, doing drugs and more by following certain hashtags.
6. The default setting is public- one of the features of TikTok that is very frustrating to parents is that when you create an account the default setting is public so you have to go out of your way to make it private. Also, in the app kids can easily switch between public and private.
7. Bullying- on this app there is a unique way in which kids are bullying other kids. They create "duets" to respond to other people's videos. They also have the ability to create a video montage of cringy videos that someone else has created to mock them and then they post it on YouTube.
Like with other social media apps, parents should be well aware and informed about what goes on within the app. At this point, there aren't many apps that don't have their risks, but right now TikTok is the most popular app for kids and teens and carries with it highly concerning risks. Now that you are informed, you can make a clearer decision around whether you want your child on this app.
Happy Parenting!