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Whose law is it of headlines, that when they ask a question it can be answered with ‘No’?
The kids are exposed to these hyper addictive algorithms, and the garbage content that gains ubiquity as a result, from a super young age. There is no way it’s not screwing up development.
No, it’s just like Dungeons and Dragons, according to others in this thread.
Good Lord. Was Dungeons and Dragons conceived and engineered from the ground up for the specific purpose of exploiting the dopamine pathways in children’s brains? Not so much. Sounds like tiktok has successfully eroded the minds of others in this thread.
Do you know how many times I’ve heard the “designed to exploit the dopamine pathways” line? You know how much proof I’ve seen for that? Zilch, nada, nothing. Not a single source is ever provided to back that claim. Does that automatically mean it’s a false claim? No, but it’s definitely suspicious. From my limited time looking into it for myself all I can see is that TikTok does, in fact, produce a dopamine response. That’s it. None of the (very few, this is an under-researched subject) studies I have found even differentiate it from other sources of dopamine. Hell, one of the articles I saw used the amount of time a fucking hashtag stays on the trending list as an indicator of the degradation of attention spans. I trust I don’t have to explain how those two are only superficially linked.
Les see… there was music, tv, then DnD, then computers, then video games, and smartphones. Just in my lifetime. Remember how video games created a generation of psychopathic murderers? I have too many bodies to hide I tell ya…
Tik Tok’s design clearly taps into psychological principles that drive addiction. The infinite scroll and unpredictable content rewards work like slot machines in a dopamine-driven feedback loop. This keeps users glued to their screens, often without realizing how much time has passed. The For You feed continuously adapts to like a million data tracking points, and spits out a constant stream of whatever content it deems most likely to keep you scrolling. Neuroscientists have pointed out that heavy TikTok use can reduce attention spans and increase the need for instant gratification which are effects tied to dopamine stimulation. Obviously bytedance isn’t going to publicize the proprietary research they used to accomplish this. But the app clearly uses these engagement-maximizing techniques. That also goes for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit (they wish lol) and the rest of them. But in tiktok’s case, it’s an export from an adversarial nation, and you only need to look at the internally approved version of tiktok for Chinese users, which promotes a completely different kind of content.
Which neuroscientists are saying that? All the articles I’ve found referring to “TikTok Brain” quote one Dr. Patrick Porter. And I have become quite wary of trusting one man’s word, even that of a professional, since the whole vaccines cause autism thing.
Here are several studies, I have not read all of them but they are what I found:
https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/items/277e3219-85d2-41ac-92f3-4ac3745c1d58
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8820
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.641673/full
https://theoxfordblue.co.uk/tiktok-and-the-death-of-the-attention-span/
The first one is one that I didn’t find in my own time. It correlates heavy usage of TikTok with a decreased ability to block one’s own distracting thoughts. Certainly interesting, and worth further study, but the authors appear to have equated that correlation with a causal effect. They did not satisfactorily delineate between someone who has a poor attention span and is attracted to TikTok because of it and someone with a poor attention span caused by TikTok.
The second and third studies I have already addressed in my other comments. The second study being the Chinese one that demonstrated a correlation between heavy TikTok usage and memory loss, anxiety, stress, depression, etc. Again, important findings, but crucially not causal. The third is the meta analysis that refused to make a statements regarding detrimental effects of TikTok usage.
The fourth isn’t a study, it’s an article. This article does link to several studies, however the only one the directly mentions TikTok is, again, that same study of roughly 3,000 Chinese students. The rest of the studies mentioned are targeting social media use in general.
These articles and studies may be of interest to you
https://sites.brown.edu/publichealthjournal/2021/12/13/tiktok/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8010681/
https://www.psychreg.org/double-tap-dopamine-science-social-media-likes-impact-minds/
You have linked a term paper, one study, and two articles. The study is a meta analysis that refuses to comment on the detrimental effects of TikTok usage due to a lack of research in the field in general. One article is about social media use in general and does not directly link to any scholarly works. The other does directly target TikTok and links to a study on Chinese students. There, TikTok Use Disorder was positively correlated with memory loss, anxiety, stress, and depression. Unfortunately my understanding of statistical analysis is not strong enough to judge the quality of the study, but to my limited knowledge it seems robust for its purposes. That being said, positive correlation does not necessarily prove causation. Notably, this study was a one time questionnaire. Meaning there isn’t any mechanism to determine the effects of high TikTok usage over time.
All this is to say that the field is deeply understudied, and that there aren’t any reliable conclusions that can be drawn yet. It may be that there are adverse effects, but that has yet to be proven.
Got my kids back for the summer, first time since they got phones (9 and 11-yo). They’re hooked through the fucking bag. And that’s with their mom having severely limiting their screen time.
If I so much as threaten to take their phones, they act exactly like an addict having their stash stolen. If a literal demon jumped out the phone, grabbed them by the neck and punched them in face, they’d go right back on the screen.
I listen in, and it’s all high-pitched chatter at 100mph, randomly switching topics and formats. If the internet has fried my brain at 53, god knows what it’s doing to them.
This post scares the hell out of me. My daughter is 5 and sheltered but I know this is coming, I see it in other friends and families. Even the parents get sucked in and tell me about these addictive and fun empty headed music videos and it becomes a family event of consuming YouTube which makes me really question our Idiocracy future…
Yes, but probably only about as much as every other garbage social media trashsite like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Omfg. What a trash article. Great examples of the spin the politicians are trying on, of tiktok. because people can use it to unite against an unjust system and that made them scared and therefore launch a negative campaign and force a take over of the whole app. I mean, come on!! Such a bad article.
There’s more misinformation on fb. Marky Z, when asked why he let’s all a that just spread around, said, he thinks people can just tell stuff is lies by looking at it. He knows that isn’t true.
An authoritarian government as evil as China’s having power over that platform compromises it. Tiktok escalates content that hurts western governments but downplays content critical of China. How many times have you heard about the ongoing Uyghur genocide and the over 1 million Uyghurs still imprisoned in China on Tiktok? Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is boosted everywhere because it makes America look bad. While all attention brought to work against genocide is good, it’s important to note China has their finger on the scale pushing down content against their interests. China does things just as worthy of Tiktok activism and it is ignored by the algorithm on purpose.
Decentralized social media is really the best option for public discourse in the long run.
Maybe people are just less interested in accusations against a state on the other side of the planet and much more interested in the open, horrifying and costly crimes committed by their “own”.
edit: Also nobody in the USA is advocating for the oppression of the uyghurs so there’s not much to protest here. The situation is almost completely reversed with respect to palestine.
It’s pretty sad to see Vox’s decline into gutter clickbait media. I guess it was inevitable once Klein and Yglesias left, and their mediocre minions took over.
No more than any other social network and more likely to be less so. This just seems to be a justification for future government action against the app/company.
It’s not changing them, it’s breaking them free of the bullshit authorized narrative the government has over other social media platforms. It allows us to talk to each other which the government does not want. It’s a tool for class consciousness.
Lmao
lol
Good guy CCP, breaking us free of government control, must be so good to live under them 🥰 more CCP control pls 😍🥰🥰
