Endocrinologist Keti Asatiani talks about the effect of regular use of TikTok on people’s health and why it is especially important for children and teenagers.
We offer an interview:
– Unfortunately, we must note that such a term as TikTok brain has already been established. This has a significant impact on the health of the user who continuously uses the mentioned platform. It is especially dangerous from the point of view of brain development of adults and children.
Consequently, the more frequent the consumption, the more difficult and severe the result. In fact, this generation does not understand time and space. We are dealing with an absolutely uncontrolled process and behavior. Also, it should be emphasized that TikTok is a source of short videos and thus, it has been shown that this has a very bad effect on both memory ability and attention and concentration.
Another term has been established – problem users of TikTok. Problematic TikTok users can no longer control their behavior. The behavior has completely changed. Also, we know that people generally watch videos between 21 and 34 seconds. Consequently, regular users actually spend hours. The results of various studies show that regular users have completely changed perception, concentration, and learning ability.
Since it concerns the young generation, it is about preparing homework, the problem of reading a book. It is quite an alarming list. In addition, they find it difficult to watch relatively long videos and note that watching large format videos is stressful. In 2022, TikTok marketers had an attempt to increase the length of videos a bit.
For example, they offered a 10-minute video to their loyal customers. Young people were not attracted to 10-minute videos and remained stubbornly committed to smaller, shorter videos. The interviewees themselves note that they have an insatiable desire to watch new videos.
Why is this alarming?
– Because it is addictive. It is one of the types of addiction. When we talk about addiction, another interesting term – addictive design appears. With minimal effort, with just a thumbs-up, a cascade of useless information is presented, which absolutely destroys and slows down the attention span and concentration. Especially, we are talking about teenagers.
Not only the TikTok application, but also Instagram, Facebook were attracted by such a design. They also gradually adopted this model and such short videos appeared everywhere. For those who are used to watching short, small videos, other platforms are much more boring because they are used to the fast pace of TikTok. When data from TikTok followers was examined, their dopamine production was actually comparable to that of a gambling addict.
Also, as a result of the magnetic resonance study of the brain, it was revealed that even frontal lobe atrophy was confirmed in children who spend at least 4 hours on TikTok. The National Center of Columbia University has published quite alarming data. Teenagers who use social networks daily are 3 times more likely to start binge drinking. They are 2 times more likely to become marijuana users and 5 times more likely to become tobacco users.
This is a comparison with those adults who are not engaged with the mentioned platform, or who apply in a very high dosage. Founder and Chair of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University says:
“This year’s results should scare parents. It should be considered a form of digital abuse when a parent exposes a child to a device at such a young age that carries such a high risk.” Unfortunately, 70% of adolescents between 12 and 17 years old are under this harmful influence.
Source: geonewest.com
