Digital technology can be very harmful and dangerous to an individual’s mental state in today’s world. Especially Social Media. The social media app TikTok, is simply an app where you scroll through videos with a combination of catchy dances and music/sounds. When someone scrolls through Tik Tok and watches these videos, it releases dopamine in their brain which people get easily addicted to. However, the minute you start scrolling through videos, the app learns what you like and dislike based on how long you view videos and which videos you like so they can then keep feeding you videos that you’ll find entertainment and get a “dopamine rush out of. When individuals get this release of dopamine, they keep scrolling and get hooked onto it for hours at a time. I like to call this a “trance”. This is harmful because it can destroy your motivation, it wastes time, it’s distracting, and it makes people lethargic. I also believe that these social media apps make people so lazy, that they go to these platforms as a quick form of entertainment instead of taking the time to be entertained in other better ways such as watching a movie, going out and interacting with other people, etc. After the gain in popularity of tiktok, many other platforms such as instagram, youtube and snapchat implemented a form of tiktok onto their platforms called “shorts” or “reels”. It was bad enough that tiktok had this feature, but now it has carried over to all other social media platforms. I have seen many people I know get negatively affected by this. Especially in this new generation. My twelve year old brother for example is always on tiktok, watching these videos getting this release of dopamine at such a young age which is certainly unhealthy, and is the reason why we try to limit his use on his phone. A child that young is meant to be playing outside, hanging out with friends, living out his childhood. This goes to show how social media is taking over our lives.
I believe that one way that would help this addiction of social media and videos would be to make an app to help balance this. I would create an app that notifies people when they have been on an app for too long. For example, the app would know each time you open tiktok or instagram and if you’re on it constantly for thirty minutes or longer the app would send a notification saying how long you have been scrolling for, and to stop and do something else more productive. I would also add a feature on this app that would automatically close tiktok or instagram after a certain amount of time. You would choose a time limit to these apps daily, and if you exceed these times then it will automatically quit you out of the app preventing you to keep scrolling.
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