While the negative effects of social media are well documented, a new paper published by researchers at Macquarie University, La Trobe University and UNSW, has found some surprising benefits for teens who use TikTok.
Associate Professor Jess McLean from the School of Social Sciences conducted a qualitative study with a group of teenagers aged between 13 and 17, and discovered that care was an important theme in their experiences. Using TikTok helped them to nurture relationships, find support, express themselves and become more aware of their privilege and social issues around the globe.
“TikTok is an avenue for extending and building already existing friendships and family relationships,” Associate Professor McLean says. “Participants share videos and comment on what they are experiencing on TikTok with friends and siblings to build their connections.”
Connection and care during COVID-19
TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform globally, however to date the voices of young people have been mostly absent from studies conducted on the platform.
This prompted Dr McLean to focus on this cohort - along with co-authors Dr Clare Southerton and Professor Deborah Lupton - for their paper Young people and TikTok use in Australia: digital geographies of care in popular culture, which was recently published in leading international journal Social & Cultural Geography.
“We spoke to young people mostly during the 2021 lockdown about their use of TikTok and the affordances the app provided. They could extend care across distance through sharing videos and it was also a part of their self-care routines,” Associate Professor McLean says.
“People could scroll through TikTok as a break from doing homework or schoolwork, and it added some diversity to their day. They could also get a sense of what was happening in other parts of the world and broaden their horizons.”
Awareness of social issues
Another way that care was evident was through the way in which TikTok broadened the participants world views and created more awareness around social issues, researchers found.
I was also intrigued by how some of the participants thought TikTok helped people understand their privilege.
“What was interesting was that by using TikTok, there was a greater awareness of geographic and ethnic diversity,” Associate Professor McLean says.
“People observed differences between rural and urban TikTok content creators. One of our respondents talked about how the city is considered the default location by TikTok users, while rural content creators sometimes lampoon urban dwellers.
“It was really interesting as well to hear lots of positive commentary around gender-based solidarity where women were supporting women, and there were a lot of positive opportunities for people to express and assert different identities.”
The research participants were mostly situated in Sydney, and Associate Professor McLean says she was surprised by the extent to which TikTok made people aware of their relative privilege.
Representation: TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform globally, says Associate Professor McLean, pictured, but the voices of young people have been mostly absent from studies about the platform.
“I found it really interesting that teenagers engage with content that shows other ways of being and some of the economic constraints that people elsewhere in the world experienced," she says.
“I was also really intrigued by how some of the participants thought TikTok helped people understand their privilege. I wasn't predicting that that would be an outcome of the research."
One 13 year-old participant identified Bader Al Safar, a TikTok star with more than 24 million followers, as his favourite content creator. While Al Safar’s content is often centred on playful recipes and hacks, he also posts serious critiques of social injustice.
“To be exposed to those sorts of stories and experiences alongside each other is something that TikTok enables in a very constructive way,” she says.
“Also, the length of the TikTok [video] makes it really appealing to children and young people. They can engage with many different viewpoints quite quickly, in a way that centres entertainment, rather than more flat forms of communication that might be more text-based.”
Taking a critical view
As popular as TikTok is with teens, they are not engaging with it or viewing it in an uncritical way, the researchers found. Children and young people are aware of its downsides and like to work proactively to improve the experience. They also have an expectation that TikTok will have a duty of care to people using the platform.
“While there was a lot of enthusiasm and enjoyment with using TikTok, there was also recognition of its problems,” Associate Professor McLean says.
“For instance, one user said that they would report things that they thought were inappropriate, that should be removed, and other participants were a bit frustrated that there hadn't been any action taken on complaints - that nothing happened as a result of that.”
Other aspects the participants saw as negatives included the algorithm being too effective at showing them similar content, which prevented them from being exposed to other topics or ideas. Shadow banning (when a social media platform bans a user's content from showing up without notifying the user), hate speech and cancel culture were other issues that bothered them about using the app.
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In terms of time spent on the app, participants reported using TikTok for between 30 minutes and four hours a day during the lockdown.
“I think it's really important to have some constraints on how we use digital technologies, including social media, and the children and young people identified this as an important issue,” Associate Professor McLean says.
“The app helps facilitate care, even though there are careless aspects to it as well, just like other platforms. TikTok provides opportunities for children and young people to have fun and build connections with each other - that’s really important to keep in mind. And those are all reasons why they keep using TikTok. They also discussed ways TikTok sometimes didn’t feel supportive or safe and shared their ideas for ways the app could better enable care for all its users.”
Jess McLean is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences.
