TikTok. I did it so you don't have to.

I spent a month on the app. Got in and got out. Consider this a report from the trenches.

Happy New Year. I hope 2023 is a good one/ok one/better one for you. I’m as yet undecided about this new vista I’m seeing. The weather for a start is not right. But whatever. We go on.

I’m forgoing the 3 things today. It’s just 1 longer thing.

It started about a week before Christmas. I thought ‘why not see what the fuss is about’ and set up an anonymous account and got started by playing around, working out the technology. I will say it’s a great and really comprehensive platform which has all you need in the one app for producing videos with music if you want, and editable captions, lots of filters, and template styling.

I did some short vids on nothing much, just ‘testing the water’ to see if it could be viable for my business (we deliver sex ed). Maybe we could offer short explainer videos and also answer questions. But to start with, I didn’t want to go to that content. I just wanted to muck around, so my first video was me saying ‘I’m a newbie, I don’t know how this works, just want to do a few videos and see how this app is’. Got like 400 views. More than anything really that I’d done on Twitter or Instagram. Next few vids: me talking about what this account wouldn’t be. That it wasn’t my main content, that I had other interests, but that the weather in Melbourne is shit, and that maybe I’d link to a project I’m working on. Me in my car talking about the weather. Me talking about my cats, or a new board game we got (Carcassone if you’re interested). Then I recorded a video with my daughter chatting about Prince Harry’s new book Spare. (Yes, I’m a closet royal watcher.) Well. That video – I cut it into about three clips – one of them got 90K views by the time I deactivated my account a mere three weeks later (more on that in a bit).

At first that clip with us mocking Harry and his book got about 23,000 views overnight, and grew more each day. By now I was regularly looking at other people’s videos. Mostly Australian content, organised into a few consistent categories:

1. conspiracy theorists (Luminati, MK-Ultra, the royals are lizard people, a touch of adrenochrome, celebrities drink the blood of babies, celebrities are clones and – get this – ‘inverts’ (which means the women are men and the men are women), UFOs are in clouds, flat-earthers, sex trafficking-Epstein-Maxwell, Britney Spears is dead (so is Kanye and clones have taken their place). And on and on

2. horses (this was nice. Endless videos of cross country, gymkhanas, dressage, hacking). This was the algorithm working for me as I would stop and watch every horse video

3. fun stuff (dances, dance trends, also people lip-syncing to other people like excerpts from Harry’s book –  especially about his todger – and people dancing and lip syncing to Miley Cyrus’s Flowers, comedians doing fun stuff)

4. sex stuff – so OnlyFans and porn people – I guess – ‘advertising their wares’ (not much, I wouldn’t stop and watch although there was one man with an enormous todger dancing in his boxers. So I’ll cop that one watch)

5. political/activisty stuff, especially so much backlash against trans activism. Again I probably watched one video and it then hooked onto me

6. true crime – the usual

7. get ready with me (GRWM) – because people worked out it’s boring just listening to a story so if they put make up on and tell the story it’s better (who said?)

The thing is, it is crazy how addictive it is. I could spend hours scrolling. It killed any desire I had to ‘check Twitter’ or ‘check Instagram’ or even watch TV, let alone read a book. It made me think about kids and teenagers and how their brains won’t have a chance.

One day I was trying to work on my manuscript and kept reaching for the phone. I resisted and instead wrote down the time when I had that urge. Have a look:

Gradually, the time spread out but in the first half hour it was about every two minutes! Are we aware of how this type of thing is eroding our focus? Do we just ignore and carry on. I know I have with other social media apps. It was TikTok that really woke me up and made me see how pervasive it is.

It affected my sleep as well. I’d be tired, turn the light off and then after about 30 seconds something would happen – as if a light turned on – and it was my mind waiting for the next hit of dopamine. That’s what did it. That and on two occasions a voice saying ‘Don’t’ or ‘Stop’ or another single word I can’t remember. It wasn’t my voice. Oh and I had ear worms too. Songs that people commonly put to their videos, so regularly that they became theme tunes to certain types of videos, say the mystery/true crime ones, or the conspiracy ones. I was hearing the songs in my head. It was scary.

So I had a bunch of videos on my account, and there were 300+ 400+ comments. Never seen this sort of engagement on my other platforms. I’ve been on Twitter since 2012 and I have 1500 followers. Almost a thousand on Instagram. This was crazy. My followers were growing at pace: almost 700 when I deactivated. And the videos – that early one had hit 90,000, and others ranged between 400-500, 8,000-40,000, but the content was all Harry and Meghan, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. A real niche that isn’t my thing but was pulling views and comments because everyone is mad about something.

I got scared. I got scared that people would somehow find me in my real world of Twitter, Insta, Facebook and my place of business (website). Or the podcast that I do with my daughter, where we do share a lot of personal stuff.

So what is this about? Is it a lesson or a report? A bit of both.

I realised that TikTok is not the platform for my work, where we deliver sex and relationships education to school students and parent education as well. We talk about puberty, reproduction, consent, friendships, relationships, assault, body safety, respect. Can you imagine the trolling? Also, on TikTok certain language/terms are blocked or penalised, so users and creators come up with alternative language – or even emojis – which isn’t always clear, unless you’re in the know. Seggs for sex; or s3x. Corn for porn. A recent one is mascara – which is either for penis or sexual assault.

It’s a super dark place. It frightened me how quickly my feed became dark. And how quickly it changed – overnight to something more benign, almost as if the algorithm knew that withholding certain material (all the conspiracy stuff, for example) may make me go and search it out on hashtags. And then from benign to dark once more.

So I’m off it. Although I did sneak back and look at a few videos in my ‘For You Feed’. Back to innocuous GRWMs and dances, but with lots of school girls in their uniforms (with easily-identifiable crests on jumpers) now that school has started again in Australia. But I don’t let myself scroll for more than 5 minutes and then I jump off.

I’d love to hear what you think. Do you use TikTok? If so, how long for, and do you just watch other people’s videos or do you create them as well? It’s a super compelling app. and I of course have experienced the pull of it, and I hope I can stay off it.

Have a good evening. Oooh next episode of The Last Of Us is available!

— JMA

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