“It’s not going to make anyone depressed overnight, but hours of consumption every day can have a serious impact on your mental health.”

“The app provides an endless stream of emotional nudges, which can be hard to recognize and really impact users in the long run,” Faddoul said. Researchers are still parsing what that uncanny tailoring means for users, particularly as it relates to targeted content around mental illness and other sensitive issues. The app’s For You Page seems to know its users’ desires and interests so well it has sparked memes and articles such as The TikTok Algorithm Knew My Sexuality Better Than I Did and ‘ Why is My TikTok For You Page All Lesbians?’ Asks Woman Who is About to Realize Why. TikTok also appears to be “faster than any other platform at detecting interest”, said Marc Faddoul, co-director of Tracking Exposed, a digital rights organization investigating TikTok’s algorithm. “This leads to both interesting content, and some edgy ways of seeking attention that are less healthy.” “Compared to other social media sites, TikTok is uniquely performative,” said Rich, the pediatrician. A new lawsuit claims the “blackout challenge” led to deaths of several young girls.

The “Benadryl challenge”, wherein participants took a large amount of antihistamines in an attempt to produce hallucinogenic effects, led to at least one death. In recent years, TikTok has faced intense scrutiny for dangerous challenges the algorithm has given rise to. We need more information to make informed decisions on how we’re going to help younger people understand how to use them thoughtfully and mindfully – or not use them at all Michael Rich, pediatrician And it incentivizes users to share attention-grabbing content that gets picked up by the feed. One report in 2021 showed more than 70% of extremist content found on YouTube was recommended to users by the algorithm. Studies show that when chronological feeds are discarded in favor of suggested content, the algorithm frequently gives rise to more extreme views. “What that does to the brain, we don’t know,” said Lorenz-Spreen. In order to do that, the company has deployed a unique algorithm and a landing page that marks the most extreme departure yet from a chronological to an algorithmic feed.

TikTok largely optimizes content for minutes and hours of view time, internal documents leaked in 2021 showed, rather than prioritizing metrics like clicks and engagement favored by most social media platforms before.

In 2021, for example, internal research at Instagram made public by Frances Haugen showed the drastic mental health impacts of the photo app on teen users – including increased rates of eating disorders among teen girls – and sparked widespread calls for stronger regulation.īut TikTok hosts similar harmful content, and experts warn a host of innovative features of the platform raise unique concerns. “We need more information to make informed decisions on how we’re going to help younger people understand how to use them thoughtfully and mindfully – or not use them at all.” What makes TikTok differentĬoncerns about the mental health impacts of social media activity are longstanding, and have only intensified in recent years. “We owe it to ourselves and to the users of these platforms to understand how we are changed by the screens we use and how we use them,” said Michael Rich, a pediatrician who studies the impact of technology on children at Boston Children’s hospital. The majority of US teens have accounts on TikTok, with 67% saying they have ever used the app and 16% saying they use it “almost constantly”. Increasingly called “the TikTok generation”, Gen Z prefers the platform to other social media, with nearly six in 10 teenagers counting themselves as daily users. The lack of understanding in how TikTok affects its users is particularly concerning given the app’s massive popularity among young people, experts say.

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