I have never downloaded it out of principle. I just read a recent online article about a boy who from a Benedryl challenge. It made me stop and think again about what Tiktok has actually done to benefit society. I'm not necessarily attacking anyone that uses Tiktok, just the application itself. What does Tiktok contribute to society other than showcasing a person's vanity? Or their ignorance? Anyway...I don't recommend anyone using it but if someone wants to use it I won't stop them. There are just better social apps out there such as Instagram that can do the same thing, just less toxic.
Honestly, TikTok is a net negative for society at large. I'm going to be very boomer here for a minute but these "challenges" people do and push? "Devious licks" whatever the hell that was? We absolutely need to stop TikTok.
That along with twitter and reddit are just societal plagues honestly and if anything they do nothing but total harm to anything it comes across so i stay away from those places at all times.
I don't like TikTok, it's overused, and it tries way too hard to be hip and cool with the kids, but it fails miserably.
It's toxic like toxic waste, offensive, and it can be also considered, "attention-abusing", since it damages young people's attention spans.
I think I'm a little old to even try to be able to appreciate it, too, in my opinion, since the application seems to be targeted towards teenagers.
In fact, this article even lists why TikTok is a bad application.
I avoided it for years until I had to download it for marketing purposes at work. Since then, the algorithm has figured out what content I like, so I'll go on for ~10 minutes a day to get my daily dose of 2000s Disney Channel throwbacks
It's not for me personally. I've never downloaded or tried it-- I just know myself and my own preferences. I've always really disliked autoplay videos. (I get jumpscared by them. I prefer to intentionally click on something before the screen starts moving, haha.) It's overstimulating to me. Instagram in particular has tried to emulate it with reels and it's not my thing at all. I can't act self righteous and say I don't get a little attached to social media every now and then. In my case I prefer to start a craft / sketch while listening to long-form content on YouTube. I can certainly see why some people would enjoy using TikTok and I'm sure it's a nice way for some creators to show off their art and creativity. (I feel no judgement towards those who use it to explore their niche interests and hobbies in a wholesome way.) However, there's a lot of toxicity surrounding TikTok that sours my opinion of the app overall. I think it'd be opening a whole can of worms to cover everything I can think of off the top of my head.
I'm so thankful that I got to experience my childhood right before social media blew up, tbh. I can't help worrying about little kids who have access to these apps so early in their lives. It's designed to be addictive and there's a lot of questionable stuff out there. Technology is moving faster than laws in a lot of different ways and it's really scary to think about.
I don't really mind TikTok, I think it can be a lot of fun as long as you don't get so wrapped up in it and wanting to be tiktok famous. I definitely can see where it is an issue (especially for those who are under the age of 18, and especially for those who are not even old enough to be on it.) I mostly like to go on it to look up traveling tips to certain places, cat videos, concerts that I am planning on going to that have happened in other cities. I don't comment on videos or anything though I have seen a lot of drama in the comments between people.
I used to watch funny animal videos on it, but I do enough of that on Instagram and prefer that platform anyway.
Overall, I’m not a fan of TikTok. It’s all very cringey to me…the robot voices, the strange dances, the pointing at text while not saying anything…. I could go on, but I find it weird. And don’t get me started on the people faking mental illnesses and other conditions for likes.
Tiktok has never really appealed to me - I also think that it has affected society in a bad way. (although this could be said for any social media really) It really seems to take over people's lives unlike any other social media that I've seen and a lot of the 'challenges' and trends are some of the dumbest things I have ever heard of.
I saw a child died from an overdose after doing 'the benadryl challenge' where you take over double the recommended limit of benadryl to start hallucinating. Stuff like that really puts me off it and like the person above said, I just find things like that robot voice and the dancing cringey.
I don’t actually think TikTok is a bad idea, I just think that it can have a negative impact. A lot of people my age, specifically at my school, use it, and I’ve noticed that almost everyone that uses it are the people who are dangerously addicted to their phones. There are people like me who can put their phones down for a class, but they’re nearly exclusively people who don’t have the app. Which isn’t very many people. This can be said about any social media platform, but it’s only really bad if you can’t discipline yourself and have no moderation. And I know this because while I don’t have TikTok, I do have YouTube Shorts, but I don’t ever end up scrolling mindlessly on it. Unfortunately, many teenagers struggle to avoid that.
But I guess I should stop beating around the bush and answer the question. I don’t like TikTok, I think it’s kind of stupid. Especially the trends. There’s way too many morons on the app and online in general. There actually are some good content creators, just like how YouTube shorts has some good content creators (ones that mainly make shorts and prioritize those to long form videos). But finding good TikTokers is like finding a diamond in a pool of brown. If we had more diamonds, TikTok would be much better. But there’s too much brown for me to like it. Like I said before, it’s not a bad idea, it’s just filled with people who think they have good ideas (spoiler: they don’t).
tbh i probably have a tiktok problem LOL. i've had quite a few nights where i would just endlessly scroll and usually if i'm bored i'll end up scrolling on tiktok anyways. i do learn a lot of interesting things on tiktok though but it's kinda scary how well the algorithm works. most of these days i think i get my news from tiktok more than anywhere else which says something. what that says i don't really know, but at least i'm staying informed?? LOL. i also like to get product recommendations like makeup/skincare off of tiktok too.
My siblings use TikTok and my parents are also using something similar on Facebook. I get the appeal it has on my generation and others but I don’t use it and I will never use it for the reasons listed in this thread (toxicity, repetitiveness, mental health, etc.) Also, I can’t believe nobody mentioned the possibility of your data being harvested by the Chinese government for who-knows-what! I wonder why; it’s been mentioned on the news plenty of times.
Personally, I find the problem with the people themselves and not TikTok. Because if TikTok does not exist, there’s definitely another app that takes its place.
I briefly had an account for watching food videos, but it was annoying to try and find the actual recipes. I generally don't like social media these days, especially short-form content. I tend to doom scroll, and platforms with lots of short-form content lend themselves to that. I don't use my other social media anymore and I think it's a bad idea for me personally to have Tiktok.
I've never understood or liked TikTok. It became popular after I graduated High School in 2018, and by then my presence on social media was already on its way out the door (I stopped using Twitter/24th letter of the alphabet regularly, then quit it completely in 2020). What turned me off from it in the beginning was its mobile ads. MY GOD were they terrible and overabundant early on. Most of them showed people dancing very poorly to songs that were overly edited or straight-up annoying. I remember one ad featured a happy teenage couple in a park with laughing and screeching baby noises mixed in for no reason, hurting my ears greatly. These ads alone gave a horrible first impression to me, and later on, I indirectly found out more about the disturbing trends that usually make the rounds around it. The popular creators appealed to a lot of users who got sucked in and became influenced by the foolish things the creators did, and there's been some unfortunate real life incidents stemming from questionable TikTok challenges.
Nowadays, their ads are much less in-your-face and tame, but I'll never get over the service's terrible first impressions and prior controversy. They were even investigated by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT at one point (look it up - I'm not going to explain it here), and the things I learned from that essentially killed all interest in me potentially joining the service. Granted, each social media service has their own problems and controversies (Instagram with mental health; Snapchat with privacy; Twitter with fake news), but to me, the TikTok challenges have done the most harm when it comes to physical safety and mental wellbeing in the real world.
For those of you that use it, I totally agree that not every single TikTok is bad. There are some content creators out there that have shared happy and inspirational things, and you can even learn new and useful stuff from it, such as food recipes and DIY hacks. Unfortunately, those creators still wouldn't convince me to join the service otherwise, as I feel that the negatives continue to outweigh the positives. That's just my personal opinion.
I never did get into TicTok. It falls under my generation but I've heard too much negativity surrounding the platform, so I haven't joined. Same thing with Twitter (although I made an account there because I couldn't read posts without one). Twitter gets linked to quite often.
There's still a curiosity that almost makes me want to join, but it's null and void. I'll never actually post there myself and ultimately I'll probably walk away feeling worse about humanity. As is the case for much of social media. My presence on these websites is ever so shrinking. I've considered deactivating my Facebook for a while and I am on the cusp.
slowly weaning myself off of it because i realize that i'm kinda addicted to it and i don't like that. not to mention i don't quite like the people on it lol.
