TikTok is not always TOP – Critical Thinking Media

Reporting from an online parent meeting of parents and teenagers who are consumers of tiktok services

Agatha Nilsson, mother of two boys. “When my kids said they wanted to chat with their classmates on TikTok, I said wait a minute, I need to learn more about this opportunity. TikTok was created by ByteDance, a Chinese IT company. It also owns the well-known news portal Tutiao and a number of other developments (Xigua Video, TopVideo, BuzzVideo). In 2016, ByteDance released the Douyin app to the Chinese market. The success of the new development was not long in coming, and a year later the company entered the vastness of the world Internet, creating the very TikTok. Now both applications exist independently of each other, as national and international alternatives to the same development. in 2017, it surpassed Instagram and Facebook in the number of downloads, breaking the threshold of two billion. But despite the impressive numbers, many have never even heard of the app’s existence. According to Oberlo statistics, TikTok has a fairly narrow audience: from 14 to 24 years old. The popularity among young people is explained by the clip format and rapidly changing content. The maximum length of a video on TikTok is only a minute, and most videos fit even within 15 seconds. It is much easier for the modern generation Z to “swallow” this format, since their attention span is several times shorter. The active global audience of TikTok at the end of October was 500 million users. “

Igor Myasin, entrepreneur, father of an 11-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son

“Thank you, a lot of useful information, I will add that analysts recorded growth by 15% compared to the 4th quarter and by 440% compared to last year. My son said that it is unlikely that my mother and I would understand young people, because the content is unique and will hardly be immediately understandable to a person “from the outside”, there you can find videos with any topic, from cute animals to singing lessons, but videos of ordinary content still prevail : trivial dances, challenges and parodies And, indeed, my wife and I do not like many videos where TikTokers expose their external merits or material well-being, this negatively affects the self-esteem of children, peers, and, unfortunately, this is where TikTok’s problems only begin . ”

Svetlana Sazhina, grandmother of two grandchildren

“The words ‘addiction’ and ‘social media’ have already become synonymous in the modern world, but TikTok’s success in addiction is phenomenal. Unlike other similar sites, posts on TikTok are not limited to user subscriptions and therefore never end. The tape is essentially endless. To create such an addictive “black hole”, it seems to me that the social network TikTok is a real information weapon. If society managed to close its eyes to everything else, reluctantly, the public opened its eyes to the biggest problem of TikTok. Everyone is afraid for their personal data, the security of which the social network willingly neglects. The site states that it stores user information such as mobile operators, unique identifiers of mobile devices, patterns in keystrokes, location, etc.

Igor Vasiliev, builder, father of three teenage sons

“I often have to travel and work abroad and I love TikTok, a service where kids post short videos with overlaid music. It is most important to keep within 1 minute (but more often in 15 seconds), getting the rhythm and words of the clipping from the song. It used to be musical.ly, but merged with the purely Chinese Douyin to create the international version of TikTok. The purpose of the service is to help users share their creativity, knowledge and fun moments. Children have mastered the available functions: masks, filters, stickers, face enhancers, a huge library of free tracks, tools for editing, gluing and duplicating videos, the ability to broadcast live, the ability to record reactions to videos. Our family is happy, children are busy and develop. ”

Alexander Novikov, great-grandfather worried about the impact of the TikTok network

“At the age of 40 I became a young grandfather, at 68 I am already a great-grandfather, and I need to be on the same wavelength with the younger generation. The audience of TikTok is constantly growing, and at the same time, the amount of hype is increasing – popular bloggers began to use the application, advertising for the service climbs literally from every slot. Apparently, people just love trendy things. Even if they don’t make much sense. Indeed, what will your classmates tell you if you do not use the new “powerful and rhythmic” service? They will laugh. True, the majority still retain at least some sanity and do not connect to the next temporary garbage aggregator. Most of the content on TikTok is lip-service-based. This is the repetition of background words with the lips. Or on vids with cool music to frankly mediocre scenes. TikTok strives to give users the ability to diversify their content with built-in music overlay. Now a generation is growing that is completely dependent on smartphones and spends most of the time in them. Videos for teens are the most common and in-demand content on social networks. They are literally obsessed with him. To get as much information as possible in a minimum of time is the goal of any person. And as awful (to me) TikTok is, it does its job very well. ”

Regina Kosichkina, unemployed, single mother

“Why do you need TikTok when you have the same YouTube, oversaturated with videos of different lengths? According to my observations, one in five is already on TikTok. Not only schoolchildren use the service.
For some reason, YouTube spins TikTok with all its might, shoving these nasty faces to wretched music in almost every video. For me, it was a revelation. Before, in principle, I assumed that there are a lot of morons in this world, but somehow before, they did not particularly try to show themselves. But in the case of this provision, the opposite is true. TikTok, created just for morons, so that they could somehow declare themselves to the world and society. What is the mental message in this? But then, after watching two dozen of these “videos”, the answers to these questions appear on their own. Let’s remember the popular saying, “Laughter for no reason, a sign of foolishness”, it fits perfectly with the description of this orgy. Only a mentally retarded person will laugh at the index finger, or they pretend to be morons, or in fact they are and are drawn to primitive entertainment. ”

Alisa Peskova, homework seamstress, mother of daughter 15 years old

“Dear colleagues, our children often become mental cripples. Growing up, they are stupid and nasty, they consider them funny and funny, I have no words … Many videos have a miserable sound background that cannot be called music, instead of jokes, there are already some stuffy body movements or just a stupid, ponty face decorated with ears, mustaches and other game. Purpose? Collect likes and promote your channel. It seems to me that instead of “upgrading” their brains, thinking and moral component, many people strive for the “animals” group. So it happened before .. Only on whose side are we, children decide, as always? ”

General conclusion: Tiktok is not always top type, parents need to be careful and teach children to be critical of this digital hobby, in some countries it has already been closed, we want children to be safe in the near future.

Ilona Musikas, Secretary of the Online Meeting