New Doc Asks: How Is TikTok Impacting Teens’ Mental Health?

Most parents wouldn’t dream of letting their child eat an experimental new food or take a new drug without seeing the research behind it – the controversy over children and COVID-19 vaccines over the past year has certainly shown that many parents are wary of introducing new things into children’s systems without knowing the long-term effects.

However, no one knows the long-term effect of social media. The medium has been mainstream for less than two decades, and little research has been done on the impact of gobbling up influencer feeds, direct messages, and the latest TikTok trends.

Surprisingly, parents seem to agree with this.

the new documentary TikTok risewhich premieres tonight on PBS Independent lensexplore the tiktok boom observing its sociopolitical, cultural and economic influences. Director Shalini Kantayya (coded bias) looks at how the social site, which is owned by the Chinese artificial intelligence company ByteDance, is affecting adolescent mental health, a topic that has received little to no credible research. It also examines the global political challenges to the platform and the racial biases it faces.

He came to the project organically. “I started using TikTok during the pandemic, like millions of Americans, and was amazed and terrified by how sticky and addictive the platform is,” says Kantayya. “Then when I started hearing that TikTok was in the crosshairs of a national security controversy, I started wondering, ‘How does an app best known for teens dancing become the center of a geopolitical controversy?’ And that put me on the path to making the movie.”

In fact, TikTok has become a staple of the daily lives of teenagers. Two-thirds say they have the popular social networking app, according to the Pew Research Center, with 16% saying they use it “almost constantly.”

But despite his popularity, he has faced skepticism. In 2020, the federal government threatened to ban the site, with then-President Donald Trump calling it a national security threat, based on the actions of his Chinese parent company. In 2022, several state attorneys general launched an investigation into TikTok’s potential impact on children’s mental health. But nothing substantive has come of the government’s action.

As Kantayya reveals, “we don’t know how this is affecting children.” She points out that the Children’s Online Protection Act, passed in 1998, is outdated and ineffective when it comes to current technology. She worries that social networking sites are hiding research on how their products impact children to protect their bottom line. “Instagram knew that their technology, their algorithm, was causing eating disorders, higher levels of anxiety and depressionand they hid the data for two years until a whistleblower came forward,” she says.

Kantayya also points out that many parents are unaware of the amount of data the app can collect about their children. “When a company like TikTok starts collecting data on a child at 10 years old, at 18, that algorithm might know your child better than you do,” she says. “And that’s an incredible amount of power.”

In many ways, says Kantayya, his documentary is the history of generation z. No other generation will grow up in the same wild west web (because future generations will presumably benefit from research and/or regulation). “I feel like it’s this massive, uncontrolled experiment, where this is your generation of kids that are growing up, coming of age online. For me, it’s this seismic shift in our humanity, and we’re not yet ready for the shift that’s happening,” she says.