One would probably be lying if they said they hadn’t tried their hands at a TikTok dance! Around the year 2019, TikTok took the world by a storm and today ​​almost everyone has a Tik Tok account or has at the very least heard about the current trends that the app tries to incubate. Its persistent success has made it a part of the current popular culture, and following in the footsteps of Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat has now come to be a social media staple. Although Tik Tok is best known for its dance videos, it has evolved into a platform for sharing – personal information, mental health concerns, political ideas — and sometimes might encourage oversharing. Tik Tok provides an intimacy that no other social media platform can match. Especially during the pandemic,  Tik Tok offered a comforting space to users who were stuck at home by allowing them to access the lives of others through short videos and through that curb the sense of alienation and isolation that the times inflicted. 

Tik Tok also affords a platform and voice to many people who might previously have not had access to it. There are millions of people all over the world who do not have a platform to show off their abilities to the rest of the world. Applications like Tik Tok make it much easier for smaller makers to reach a larger audience. They don’t have to spend money on publicity or trying to get their talent out of their small space. Similarly, it is accessible to everyone as long as they have a smartphone and internet connection. For this reason, it has also allowed many communities to collectivize. Especially during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed George Floyd’s murder, more and more Black artists were speaking out about the issue on TikTok and it became a significant platform that allowed people to express their solidarity. 

While it might have its many benefits, there are many elements of the app that reveal negative and toxic characteristics that have a significant influence on the mental health of its users, namely teenagers and young adults. Let’s admit it, we have all gone down a rabbit hole of strange Tik Tok videos for hours at a time, squandering nearly an entire day scrolling. How do you feel when you finally exit the app? Happy and content? Seldom, right! This is based on the type of content that is incredibly popular on the site. There are many kinds of content such as weight loss videos, the “what I eat in a day”, fashion hauls, all of which while not detrimental on their own, can still do damage to vulnerable individuals, especially young people, who are watching these videos in a loop. This becomes highly problematic since it can not only cause toxic ideas in people with body image issues and eating disorders, but it can also inspire some people to develop newer issues. TikTok has evolved into the go-to medium for continuous, scathing comparisons between “me” and “them”. On Tik Tok, many young children are exposed to inappropriate content such as racism, misogyny, and unhealthy beauty ideals. Tiktok leads users to believe that the entire world is made up of slender, beautiful people who live in affluent homes. These erroneous standards contribute to the hazardous misconceptions that consumers will adopt over time.

While it might be trendy, the curated 60 seconds often lacks transparency. There is editing, several retakes, months of working out, etc. that goes into the curation. The app’s impact has now started bordering on harmful, especially for young children who are forced to engage in unhealthy narratives which might be detrimental to their mental health.