Over the summer when my college son was living with us at home, he enjoyed cooking for us some. Considering cereal, macaroni & cheese, bagel bites, and at most an omelet were his previous go-tos, we were both impressed and surprised. Turns out TikTok was his tutor.
I had no idea you could find recipes on TikTok. Or, how many adults were turning to TikTok not just for cooking, but DIY home project instructional videos, crafting, hair and makeup tutorials, and more. Therefore, I must preface this post by saying TikTok, like other social media platforms, is not all bad. As helpful and fun as many videos are, there is alot about TikTok that is not good either (especially for certain audiences to have free reign).
TikTok is shaping our children and adolescents’ brains, minds, and hearts in two distinct and disturbing ways. One in which should be of particular concern for Christ-followers, but I want to start with how kids’ brains are developmentally impacted.
The Forming of Brain Pathways
Our brains our malleable, which means they are constantly being shaped and reshaped by our experiences. This is especially true for children, adolescents, and young adults up to the age of 25 while the brain is still developing. However, with repetitive experiences the neuropathways become more solidified.
To better understand this concept, think of neural pathways like hiking trails through the woods. When a trail is newly formed, knowing which way to go at certain points is unclear. But over time as the path becomes well-worn it is easy to follow. The same is true with the neural pathways. Frequently traveling the same path makes that known path the easy default. For instance, my habitual hankering for a night time snack is hard to break because my brain tells me at 9pm that it is time to grab something. Unhelpful thinking patterns, habits, and addictions are extremely hard to change because of the default path we created.
How Tik Tok plays into this scenario is our brains become accustomed to a sixty second video clips, and then– another short video clip, and another. While TikTok videos can now run up to 3 minutes, reports show many scrollers move on if a video is “too long” so in effect, the short 1-minute (but no longer than 3-minute) video burst trains our brain to have a shorter attention span. Anything more we lose interest or become distracted. TikTok is not the only guilty party of course. But with all the scrolling, snapping, and searching on apps and platforms across the web, frequent TikTok use certainly compounds the pathway to shorter attention spans.
Shorter attention spans might mean more than you think…
- With a decreased ability to focus and an increase in distractibility comes a reduction in working memory. Research even shows signs of early on-set memory loss, so I’m afraid until much later in the future will we see the true impact.
- The greater liklihood of insomnia and anxiety. I can tell you as a parent and counselor, I see lots of teens dealing with the sleeplessness that used to be associated only with older adults, and anxiety has sky-rocketed (obviously there are many reasons for this, but don’t discount attention spans and social media as factors).
- The lack of concentration is leading to decreased empathy! We are so overloaded with information, that we literally don’t have the attention to give to others. So in essence, we are allowing videos we’ll forget about soon after we watch to intervene with making meaningful in-real-life connections. We simply don’t have the capacity. We’ve traded life-giving substance for life-taking fluff.
The Shaping of Hearts and Minds
Now for the part I’m afraid most parents aren’t aware of, at least I wasn’t until recently—and that is how TikTok actually works. You may can guess that algorithms have something to do with it, which is true but to a greater degree and impact it seems than other social media sources. By design the TikTok algorithm fuels an individual’s feed with curated content based on past searches and interests. This is why my son’s TikTok shows him cooking videos, a friend’s TikTok feeds her funny mom videos, and another gets home project instructions all based on their prior searches and the videos watched. Over time TikTok “learns” what each person is interested in and gives them more of it.
So imagine with me, a middle school girl is curious about sexual identity. She is too ashamed to ask her parents or even a friend so she turns to TikTok. Before you know it her feed is bombarded with progressive post-modern content about sexuality. This is all she sees. No alternative view shows up at all. And even after she searches other topics, TikTok has already decided she will keep seeing this content.
With the viral nature of social media content and videos, thousands of other young adolescents see the same content. Now not only does a TikTok influencer promote a certain worldview, but our kids’ peers affirm it, and church-going kids begin to adapt their views. So you wonder why so many young teens are all of the sudden wondering if or declaring they are gay, or simply accepting the idea that “love is love?” TikTok’s influence is a huge contributing factor. Therefore, in a very real way TikTok, not God’s Word, not parents or the church (as used to be the case) have become our kids’ authority. This should scare us.
To blindly accept TikTok as harmless music videos and helpful tutorials is naive. While again, I’m not saying we must ban TikTok, for the sake of our kids we must not stand idly by either. Our kids’ mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being is at stake. As parents, we need to both limit their time on this platform (and others) AND know what their feeds is feeding them! What I also hope is this leads us to more proactively sheperding our kids with a biblical worldview. To be honest, the impact of doing so is far more valuable than the time and resources we invest in their academic and extra-curriculuar accomplishments. For what we do (or don’t do) to shape our kids’ minds and hearts will form not a pathway, but an entire grid for how they see and interpret God, themselves, and the world.
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