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Continued From Part II:

Check it out HERE.

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For Many Tiktok Needs No Introduction:

In this attention economy, there’s no bigger lure for children, teens and adults like Tiktok. It’s an app that promises to showcase your creativity serving it up to a large scale audience. No wonder, TikTok is the most downloaded app worldwide (since April 2021).

Tiktok offers coupons for certain brands for kids who invite their friends to download to the app. There are strangers posing as children and connecting with them. Children can come across violent and age inappropriate content even after filters to block the content.

One of the biggest issues with Tiktok is the dangerous challenges trends. We have seen the blackout challenge. We have seen children losing their lives because of this challenge and also the Skull breaker challenge.

Along with all the issues that we have seen that apps like Snapchat pose, children might face a lot of trolling and bullying in the comments section of the videos they post.

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Considerations To Keep In Mind With TikTok: 

1. Inappropriate content is very easy to find (explicit/sexual lyrics, dangerous situations, pornography, etc.)
2. Some TikTok challenges are harmless and some present dangerous situations
3. Commercial element encourages purchases
4. Powerful algorithm: “It’s algorithm stands out among other social media, such as YouTube and Instagram, for quickly assessing interests of users and providing a highly personalized stream of videos.”

SOURCES:

How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors:
The popular app can quickly drive young users into endless spools of adult content, including videos touting drug use and promoting pornography sites
SOURCE LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-sex-drugs-minors-11631052944?mod=article_inline

‘The Corpse Bride Diet’: How TikTok Inundates Teens With Eating-Disorder Videos:
The app’s algorithm can send users down rabbit holes of narrow interest, resulting in potentially dangerous content such as emaciated images, purging techniques, hazardous diets and body shaming
SOURCE LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tiktok-inundates-teens-with-eating-disorder-videos-11639754848

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Data Privacy Issues With Tiktok:

When Buzzfeed News released the Tiktok Tapes, it exposed how the China-based ByteDance (the company that owns Tiktok) employees have repeatedly accessed non-public data (like phone numbers and birthdays) of U.S. TikTok users.

“The FBI has a number of concerns, they include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used to influence operations if they so choose, or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it an opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.” director Christopher Wray told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing about worldwide threats on in 2022.

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Is TikTok Dangerous for Teens?

Here’s a great article with a lot of research and examples of how the Tiktok algorithm works.

“TikTok can read my mind” is a common refrain among young people, as the app soon starts serving up videos that are precisely what the viewer was hoping to see: whether it’s a funny cat video, or a video of synchronized swimming, or one about applying glitter make-up, or a video of a pretty girl dancing in a way that appeals to a particular teen boy and wearing precisely the outfit that boy finds most arousing, doing exactly the moves that the boy finds most irresistible. And the same is true of sexual variations. “TikTok knew I was bisexual (or gay, or trans) before I did” is a common trope online.

SOURCE:
An Excerpt From An Article by Leonard Sax, @UNFRAGILEKIDS
https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-tiktok-dangerous-for-teens-

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The Deadly Side of TikTok Viral Challenges:

Wiki says, that the Blackout challenge is an internet challenge based around a choking game, intending to restrict breathing for a set duration of time. It gained widespread notoriety on TikTok in 2021, primarily among children.

It has been compared to other online challenges and hoaxes that have exclusively targeted a young audience. Right around the time we were reeling with the effects of lockdown, we heard about these dangerous trends.

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TikTok Hit With Huge Fine:

On September 15, 2023, Europe hit TikTok with a $368 million dollar fine, accusing the company of not protecting children’s privacy. Europe has very strict privacy rules, but it is notable that this is the first time the app has faced consequences for violating any privacy laws.

Ireland led the investigation, finding that the sign-up process for teens made their accounts public by default. They say those settings also allowed children under 13 to gain access to the platform even though they aren’t permitted to have accounts.

SOURCE: https://www.parents.com/kids/safety/internet/is-tiktok-safe-for-kids/

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Conclusion:

Tiktok is saying its doing its best, it has new updates that prevent pushing notifications to users under 15 after 9pm. There are fun challenges like I’m Just a Kid challenge that you can do with your family and friends. It also shows how to filter negative comments by limiting who can respond to your videos.

If the app is here to stay, we might as well use it for the greater good, some say. And they’re pointing out all the best that can come out of using it.

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You’re in Control: How To Filter Negative Comments:

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Continued From Part IV:

Check it out HERE.

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Cited Works:

This post is an adapted version of the workshop that I attended.
It’s 9pm..Do you know what apps your teens are using?
Online Parent University “Keeping Teens Safe in a Digital World” on 9/27/23 Wednesday, 6pm-7pm.

In this meeting, we learnt about the safety concerns of popular apps among teens, unsafe default settings/parental controls, cyberbullying, and ways to teach teens to stay safe as they navigate the digital world.

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Truth About Technology

Going out for dinner, calling your mom or going to a party used to be about talking to people, about conversation. But during the last ten years something has shifted. Instead of talking about the food, we post a picture of it online; instead of calling our mother, we send her an email updating her on our lives; and at the party we’re busy showing other people YouTube clips and messaging with friends at a bar instead of talking to other people there. In short, face-to-face conversation is nowhere to be found.

~ Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle

Questions, just ask!

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