Using TikTok

One of the most trending apps among teens is Tik Tok. Tik Tok is a lip-syncing video maker app that allows you to choose the background music track and mix your day to day activities with the music track. Tik Tok is good if you create videos for fun only but a wide array of teens and kids are becoming addicted to Tik Tok and busy creating Tik Tok videos. Boys, girls, adults and even old aged people used to spend their valuable hours making Tik Tok videos. Creating videos is not bad at all but creating vulgar and violent/dancing videos can spoil your kid’s future. He/she can become an ill-mind person. So not to avoid Tik Tok’s bad impacts on Youth and to understand how Tik Tok affecting youth just scroll down.

Before describing the Tik Tok negative impact on young generation let’s check out what is Tik Tok and what makes it so addictive.

Here are the Tik Tok bad effects that should not be ignored:

• If your kid of 13 then he/she can create an account on Tik Tok and start making and uploading videos. There is a separate section for kids under 13 where they can upload and watch only clean content but if they enter the false birth date then they can easily watch adult content. One of the most notable Tik Tok negative impact on young generation is exposure to adult stuff and strangers as well.
• Tik Tok is the hub of endless videos and teens and kids are becoming addicted to Tik Tok. Teens forget their homework and other tasks and they prefer to watch Tik Tok videos. Addiction to Tik Tok is the most burning concern for parents.

This one is tough, because it’s hard to tell if I’m succumbing to what every generation thinks, “kids and many young guys are nuts”, or if this is a genuinely bad thing.

The main problem I have with TikTok is that it turns regular life into a performance. To where it glorifies entertainment to Infinite Jest levels of absurdity, and causes people to look at every single one of life’s occurrences or interactions as a videobyte to be mined for an audience.

Out of sociological curiosity I watched several hundred of these videos. Some are hilarious, some are banal, some are weird…they are all contrived. Now, entertainment being contrived isn’t necessarily a problem. Really, any TV show you watch is contrived. You have writers, show runners, comedians, directors, etc. So I’m not criticizing the contrived nature of these videos in and of themselves. It’s that they are presented as funny things that happened to ME, the person filming the video, and are presented as serendipitous or as just-happened-to-be-here-as-it-happened-how-crazy-I-caught-this-on-camera dumb luck. Part of what makes these videos so compelling is that you unconsciously put yourself in that person’s shoes. Wouldn’t it be crazy if I saw a guy walking an iguana on a leash? I would tell all my friends about it and it would be hilarious! The problem though, is that 

1) I've lively seen highly suspect of many of these serendipitous events. Is it really so far fetched to think a bunch of friends wanted to go viral so somebody dressed up as a stranger and got his pet iguana in on the bit? 

2) suppose it is real (which I’m sure crazy stuff like that does happen in the wide world), once you start filming, you alter the scene. The scenario unfolds differently as a spectator than if you’re a cameraman. The funny anecdote goes from exactly that, to a movie production…what is the optimal caption going to be for this? What filter am I going to put on it? Should I add a couple jump cuts to capture my incredulous reaction?

Take an example I can recall from the Noah sized flood of videos I watched. A daughter walks into the kitchen and notices her mom has just finished baking cookies, however, she put the dough on a cooling rack. This caused the bottom portions of the cookie to melt through the grates in effect ruining the cookies. Merriment and hilarity ensue when the daughter picks up the cooling pan and in sing song ribbing makes fun of her mom, swiveling the camera between the ruined cookies and her mother’s giggling face. But please. Rewind to the scene before that. The daughter walks in, finds the cookies, and rather than sharing a laugh between her and her mom, and maybe dad who’s in the next room, she thinks “Oh man, this would be great for TikTok” . So she exits the room and enters again, this time filming and “confronts” her mom all over again. Why are capital We so eager to share these moments with other people? Would it be such a crime to have a funny story between mother and daughter? It is well known that mother’s the world over can be goofy. So it isn’t as if you have to let the world know of this extraordinary thing that happened to you…because guess what? It’s happened to everybody. What makes your mom ruining cookies on a cooling pan so funny, is that it happened to YOUR mom. Those are your experiences. Why are those moments being turned into a product for others?

Now let me imagine some likely responses from people who think I’m being too crotchety.

What’s the big deal. How is it any different than a comedian telling a joke or doing a bit?

Appreciating art and comedy is fine. Even avant garde art and out there stuff. Art is meant to push boundaries, surprise us, awe us, make us shed tears of sadness and joy, shock us, and even dare I say, entertain us. But once you elevate entertainment above all else as the highest good, your worldview starts to get warped. You may be watching a kid filming his Social Studies teacher from the back row and get a kick out of the overdub he does, but what is the point of that? Is it art? is it a joke? is it a teaching moment? No. It is a kid who wants to perform to strangers. He wants the likes, he wants the views. Every situation he is in will be filtered through this prism of what will other people think of this? So you watch for 6 seconds, chuckle a little, and keep going down the endless scroll. Why is one of the biggest questions asked of artists, “What motivates/inspires you?” People find the ineffable creative process interesting.