i downloaded tiktok and it sent me into a spiral
can one app really do this much damage?
(note: this newsletter was formerly called finding quiet)
i have spent the past two weeks in a whirlwind of confusion and self doubt. i watched a video on youtube that annoyed me then intrigued me then excited me in the span of just a few minutes. now it has annoyed me again. i have briefly been sucked back into the world of social media, of content creation, of maybe it could work this time. i’ve said so much about just deleting the apps, about getting offline and reintroducing yourself to yourself through hobbies and passions and things you loved as a child. but then that video got me thinking, have i been saying the wrong thing? is social media really that bad? have i just been too afraid to try, for the fear that i am not as strong as i thought, for the fear that i would tip into the addiction like everyone else? it’s easy to preach getting offline if you find it easy. it’s easy when you never downloaded tiktok in the first place to tell others they don’t need it. it’s easy to say instagram is a waste of time when you’ve exhausted the platform entirely, when you’ve made so many accounts you wonder if someone at instagram thinks about you at night, thinks about you as they wonder if this job is really worth it anymore, thinks damn, that girl really can’t get enough, is instagram her entire life? i thought i escaped. instagram bores me, that is a fact. i’ll never go back. but tiktok could easily consume me. but then i watched that video and i thought: could i handle it?
the video references an article about our relationship with the machine, how most of us just accepted technology into our lives without really understanding it. i saw the clear waters of tiktok, i saw how deep those waters go, i saw the danger of drowning, but maybe i was concentrating on the wrong thing. maybe i just had to understand the app better. maybe there was more to see. look how clear the water is! what if i justed enjoyed the water close to shore, keep my head above water, i don’t have to be submerged. if i can carry the instagram app in my pocket on a daily basis and almost forget it’s there entirely, maybe i can give tiktok a try. i’ll do what the video says, use it as a tool. that’s what a lot of people say now, don’t run away from it, use social media as a tool, the same way i buy myself an extra large bar of chocolate and say i’ll only eat one row a day (i of course do not eat just one row a day). but it’s just something people say, no one actually does that, do they? i didn’t.
the pull. i forgot about the pull. it had only been a day or two with the new, shiny, unfamiliar square on my apps screen and yet every empty moment in my day had already been snatched away by the thought of scrolling. when i first made my account and logged in, the first video on my feed said hi ik ur on ur secret acc, let’s be friends. did it recognise my email address as something as obviously unserious, something i’d only use for a secret account? did it know me this intimately already? either way, i scrolled to the next video and perhaps i spent too long on that first video or it knew i screenshotted it and sent it to my friend, but the next video said having a secret acc is peaceful like me and my 4 followers against the world. this thing wants to know me. it wants me to know that it can reach the very depths of my psyche without me even knowing. it says keep going, let me show you what else i can do, let me hold up this mirror, let me tell you about yourself. that or these videos are what they show the majority of new accounts and maybe 80% of the time it’s applicable. who’s creating their first ever tiktok account nowadays. either way, my daily screentime on my phone went from around two hours a day to an average of six.
the rest of this post is for paid subscribers. upgrade your subscription or begin a free trial to find out how tiktok triggered a health anxiety panic, why spending such little time on this app prompted me to question my entire personality and my final thoughts at the end of this experiment. thank you for supporting the sun room :’)
