Cyberbullying is not anything new but TikTok has brought to life an entirely new breed of online harassment and turned it into an art form. How the hell did we get here?
TikTok (originally Musical.ly) was established in 2016 and has quickly gained popularity across the globe among pre-teens, teens and young adults for its accessibility and “viralability” for their users. This easy access to virality has catapulted everyday internet users into a short-lived spotlight where thousands and millions of people can pick them apart.
Criticism comes with the territory of fame, internet or otherwise, but from behind the screen, literal children are handing out insults resulting in life-long insecurities like its candy on Halloween. Just a quick browse through the top comments on the first few videos on your For You Page will probably result in finding plenty of backhanded compliments and jokes using the same format and sparkly emojis with thousands of likes.
This might not sound that surprising to you - kids are mean! So what? Well, a quick harsh comment and then moving on is not the only thing we have to worry about. Particularly for videos made about certain political views (both far-left and far-right opinions), celebrities or any video discussing sensitive topics like race, gender and class are often fraught with attempted “cancellation”. In many situations, users have found the creators’ personal Instagram and Facebook, further harassing them on these platforms and reporting videos to be taken down, all for simply expressing an opinion.
Why is TikTok breeding so much hate? It’s easy to get caught in the bubble at first, a lot of the comments are funny when you forget that there’s a real person on the other end, which unfortunately is the case in most situations. It is extremely easy to be anonymous on Tiktok, unlike Instagram which is primarily used to stay in touch with friends. For the most part, these are young teenagers being able to hide behind a screen spouting hatred for their five seconds of fame, and who can blame them when we reward them with exactly what they’re looking for?
There isn’t one simple solution to this issue, but that doesn’t mean that no effort should be put in to try to lessen the damage. TikTok already has anti-bullying and harassment measures in place but these aren’t working as well as they should. Social media apps need to take more responsibility for their users' wellbeing and the users themselves need to stop rewarding toxic behaviour if they want to solve anything.
Written by Ella Klassen
Artwork by Mrishana
