By skyforbes 
Social Media is changing our lives
When I am about to go to bed, I will tell myself that I am going to watch a few short videos to calm down. Next thing I know, an hour has gone by, and I have no idea how. This is caused by TikTok, the social media platform that has taken over our lives.
TikTok is an app I use every day, whether to get a few laughs, learn something new, or simply pass some time. According to SproutSocial, 82% of Gen Z is on TikTok, which is a surprisingly large share of the generation that spends time out of their day scrolling on this platform. When you’re out at restaurants or shopping centers, you are almost guaranteed to see some kids scrolling on their phones, and more times than not, they’re on TikTok. Even some of my friends, when we go out to dinner, will be scrolling on their phones in the middle of a conversation. That’s when I realized that this app really is addictive and why so many people are starting to use it more often.
When people scroll, it causes social interaction to decrease and makes us realize how much of a problem TikTok is for our generation and how it is changing our lives.
According to CNN, TikTok has changed our lives and American culture in many different ways. It has created a new side of entertainment and advertising with a new platform that hundreds of millions of people use often, including myself. It accelerates trends and creates celebrities just by posting on the app. It has also changed the music industry and how people share information, and overall has had many large impacts on how people interact with each other. Also, The Pew Research says that 55% Americans regularly get news from TikTok, which shows the culture shift that has occurred from the introduction of the app. This means that fewer people are watching news broadcasts or other traditional news sources due to TikTok, changing how they live their lives.
Elements of TikTok
TikTok is designed to keep us engaged for as long as possible. From making the interface easy to use to personalizing every video, this is all to keep you engaged. Brown University explains that the “For You” page is customized by AI, and as you use the app more, it learns what videos you watch a lot or interact with, and will show you more videos similar to those. It also talks about how the swipe-down feature to get to the next video is like pulling a slot machine lever, to give the impression that the next video may be the “winner”.
TikTok, as well as every other firm, is trying to maximize its profits, and it makes most of its money through advertisement revenue that pops up in between videos, so it will make more money the longer people are scrolling on the app. Even the advertisements on TikTok will use many strategies to keep people engaged, such as showing gameplay from their games and linking to their app in the app store, or creating a call to action like going to a website to fill out a survey.
Addiction is Real
And yes, people do truly have a real addiction to TikTok, just like drugs and other things people use and abuse. The Addiction Center says that an entertainment spiral will catch people while watching TikTok, which will distort the perception of time and encourage people to keep scrolling. They also explain that there are specific traits that define an addiction to TikTok, such as mood swings, anxiety, and withdrawal, which shows that being addicted to TikTok can actually begin to have negative health impacts.
I use TikTok for 2 hours a day on average, and there are many different reasons that I use it. I will initially use it just to pass a few minutes and decompress from my day, but I will then end up scrolling for 30+ minutes when I have many other tasks that I need to get done, but forget about them while I am on the app.
The dopamine that is released from each TikTok scroll keeps people coming back. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gets released in the brain when it’s expecting a reward.” The dopamine received from this positive feedback loop of getting or giving an endorsement on a video causes people to keep making videos, as well as coming back to see what else is popular. In general, the amount of dopamine that people get from every scroll causes them to keep scrolling, and it is one of the reasons why it is so addictive. Many of my friends talk about how they need a “dopamine hit” by getting a few scrolls on TikTok in a joking way, but I don’t know how much they are joking; they are addicted.
One other reason users become so addicted to TikTok is the likes feature, which allows users to give or receive approval of content from one another, says a Brown University study. This causes them to keep coming back and wanting to get the approval of others. People enjoy being involved in popular trends, and this like feature gives a visual way to show the popularity of a certain post. Although I do not post on TikTok myself, I know many others who will repeatedly open the app to see how much engagement their recent post has received. On top of this, many videos go viral and people get obsessed with the insane like count of certain videos, as random videos posted will receive millions of likes in just days.
Impacts and Truth of TikTok
Depression and anxiety are at an all-time high for this generation, and this is greatly due to the addiction to TikTok and other social media platforms. And we need to change this, as the future of our world relies on this generation. The Atlantic article explains that TikTok is especially good at lulling users into a flow state where they are so engaged that they seem like they can’t stop watching. It also talks about how the app erodes our self-control in ways that many other apps do not.
People who are addicted know it, and they still can’t stop. A study shown in the Atlantic article said that 44% of people supported a TikTok ban, but only 34% saw it as a national security threat, and they concluded that the rest thought it should be deleted to help save people from the constant doomscrolling and addiction to the app.
TikTok isn’t just another social media app with funny videos — it takes over the mind of the user. It moves so fast, has a wealth of content, and offers a variety of videos for everyone, which is why so many people use the app. They truly get addicted and trap themselves in a new digital world that they feel like they cannot escape. It makes them crave this scrolling, all day, over and over, and this loop really drives the addiction to the app.
We know it’s addictive, and we still do it. We sit there and scroll for hours to escape reality, and this causes us to not be in tune with the real world, causing the high rates of depression and anxiety we see in Gen Z today. TikTok tailors to many aspects of Gen Z, like their low attention span, search for community, and access to new information. I think that I, along with the rest of my generation, need to find a way to balance our TikTok use before it changes our lives forever.