I don’t know if you know how TikTok trends work, so I will give a brief overview:
The most popular “trends” on the site are basically memes, but they are expressed through actions/behaviors instead of through images like they are on other social media sites (and Any Forums).
So, these “trends” start by someone performing some behavior. They do a dance to some song, they post some incredibly vain montage of images of their life to humblebrag set to a song, they lip sync to some soundbite with some new context…you all know how this works. Drawings of frogs with new twists on them that dominate this site hold to the same basic principle (although I will explain why the Tik Tok “trends” are way worse).
So, as I said before, someone starts one of these “trends” which results in social validation through “likes,” positive comments, and new followers.
Basically my theory is that TikTok is creating a reward pathway in people’s brains for following/imitating the crowd in a way that is much more powerful than the one you get from making posts on the internet, since you are getting this validation in response to physical actions, not just text on a screen.
It doesn’t matter that most of these “trends” are completely benign. In fact, it might make it worse because doing some silly dance is SO innocuous that the idea that there could be any negative consequences from this is absurd on its face to most people, especially those who have not yet become jaded and cynical by life (aka teenagers and kids, who are also far more susceptible to being rewired due to brain plasticity).
My conclusion is: TikTok is creating an incredibly powerful, and very real link in young people’s minds between dopamine rewards and behavioral imitation of whatever is most popular at any given time.
