After its recent representation to the audience, the Chinese app, TikTok, has undoubtedly gained a great deal of popularity, particularly amongst the teenagers and young adults who are, nowadays, nearly addicted to using social media apps and are always eager to try out any new app. However, TikTok didn’t cleverly take any precautions in order to prevent, or even delay, the approaching of a publicity scandal.
Since its re-launch, Tik Tok designers were asked to create and provide some sort of a guidance and control over the content of the app and the lifestyles and illusions the app transfers to the younger generation.
However, the absence of any sort of control over the content of the app has led to the appearance of some problematic videos which, consequently, created a fuss about the impact of TikTok on the society. Such probelamtic videos contain either teenagers dancing in a shameful manner or some exhibition of unethical behaviour, which, in both cases, allude to the immediate necessity for TikTok to provide the audience with a parental control option.
Of course, the Chinese TikTok is aware of the importance of providing its users with appropriate measures of control and guidance, but the true problem lies in the facts that: first, the users base of TikTok is increasing rapidly each day and not all of the users are underage boys and girls who are exhibiting bad or unacceptable behaviours, there are also innumerable young people who use TikTok for ordinary reasons of entertainment, and it would require a huge effort to infiltrate the contents of the app and separate the good from the bad; and second, there’s another portion of the problem that partly lies beyond the capability of TikTok app, and that portion is the reality that the inappropriate and obscene videos popular on Tik Tok are all collected and used as cheap distracts on other platforms such as YouTube. As a result, the main solution has to spring from Tik Tok itself; if there weren’t any sort of videos including wrongdoings from the start, there’ll be no problematic content to do the rounds.
Clearly, as stated before, many teenagers and youngsters use Tik Tok for legitimate purposes, but it’s crystal clear that the undesired and inappropriate purposes are the ones that are prevalent and are spreading not only through TikTok, but also through other platforms and apps. If such degrading contents continue to take place, serious problems are definitely awaiting TikTok. Hopefully, Tik Tok will soon carry out its June plans to present parental controls which will alert the users if inappropriate content is about to be displayed. However, the more time Tik-Tok exerts to make its content ethically acceptable, the more problems the app is going to encounter.
