A New Addiction

Are you addicted to TikTok?

Turn on your phone and go into settings. Press screen time and look at the time spent on TikTok. If you spend a significant and consistent amount of time on TikTok throughout the week, you might be addicted. Can you go days without opening this app? Were you surprised by the amount of time you spent on this app?

TikTok is an app where people upload short videos and others get to interact with them. This app started in 2016 with a stable release in October of 2022. According to Brandon Doyle, the CEO and Founder of WALLAROO media, “TikTok is available in over 150 countries, has over 1 billion users, and has been downloaded over 210 million times in the United States alone”. From this, it becomes evident just how popular the social media platform has become. A new question arises: Is this a good or bad thing?

Walking around the halls at school, how many people do you notice on TikTok?

Many people at school use TikTok. They use it in class, in the hallways, at lunch and even sitting alone in the quad. When I walk past people on their phones, they are almost always scrolling through TikTok. This app is supposed to be an entertaining pastime, not your entire world.

Could teenagers be using it as a social escape? If so, this app would be doing more harm than good. Teens will get sucked into social media and neglect the outside world. I have also been guilty of this. Now, what can we as students do to battle this phenomenon? A good thing to start with is limiting our use of TikTok to nothing more than an hour or at most two hours. If you find yourself unable to stay away from the app, then I’m sorry to inform you: you’re addicted.