TikTok, May I Have Your Attention?
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An itch, an itch that consumes the lives of Gen Z and lingers throughout their mind until the day ceases. This itch can be described as the overwhelming desire to be engrossed in the trenches of social media, even when this engrossment is unwarranted. Gen Z has fallen victim to the social media frenzy that has defined the way we interact with society. Social media has excelled at the practice of elevating all forms of communication, but this communication efficiency comes at a cost to the users: Gen Z.
Place yourself in a public setting, either a classroom, restaurants, or any other location where people are clustered. The intent of both a classroom setting and restaurants is void of social media, but social media is always present. From the bored college student who needs their Instagram fix to the Facebook mom who believes it is imperative to update her friends on her evening activities, social media is infiltrating every crevice of our lives and kidnapping our attention spans.
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Who is the main culprit in the slew of offenders? Well that question is subjective, depending on one’s personal preferences. Nevertheless, there is one platform that is widely considered the pandemic hero, rescuing quarantined individuals from boredom induced delirium: TikTok.
TikTok has perfected the art of attracting and holding sturdy reins on its users. With an algorithm tailored to a user’s preferences, it’s difficult to not be completely immersed in your personally catered FYP. The coveted, intoxicating FYP is where disorder emerges. Fast emerging videos are intrinsic to the success of the app. Since most videos last less than sixty seconds, a user can view a myriad of content within minutes. Eventually users begin to crave more content that is fast, new, and spans just a few seconds. This ushers in a state of peril – for attention spans at least.
As TikTok captivates our interest, it disintegrates our desire to observe the environment outside the app. Research on social media’s effect on brain function has mainly surrounded multi-tasking. In this context, multi-tasking is constituted as switching from TikTok to other social media platforms all within the same period of time. Conclusions on this area of research have found that “people who multitask across social media tend not to do well at tasks that require them to filter out distractions.” Additionally, Microsoft researchers established that “people tend to lose interest in what they’re watching after eight seconds, if it’s not sufficiently diverting.” The ability for people to lose interest in a mere eight seconds has profound potential to cause description in our attention spans that may have lasting effects. Currently, this research is inconclusive due to the freshness of the phenomenon, but further research and aging of the platform will hopefully unlock more answers.
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To combat the fixation chokehold that TikTok and other social media platforms have on the masses, there are cautionary steps that can be taken. These are rather intuitive but not always vocalized or highlighted as solutions. Setting a timer for the amount of minutes or hours you can spend on the app is not only easy but creates awareness of one’s total usage of the app. Furthermore, deleting the apps off your device completely for a certain amount of time may be easier than previously assumed. Lastly, resorting to other means for entertainment that are often overshadowed, such as reading, playing board games, and baking can also help restore one’s attentiveness.
Humans are bursting with potential to erupt into unique, inspiring people, but we cannot let social media platform transform us into slaves of the screen.
Strike Out,
Writer: Isabella Patel
Editor: Jordan Ross
Athens