Student Research Guide WQ25/ Tiktok and Young Adults

TikTok's Effects on Young Adults

 This is a student created research guide for English 102 & Library 201 Learning community

The purpose of this guide is to explore issues around social media's negative impacts on young adults. 

• The research thesis of this guide is to explore the negative mental, physical, and emotional effects that TikTok specifically has on younger people and their views on their self worth, body image, and being able to be social. 
• The research questions addressed in this guide are:

1. How has diet culture changed throughout the years on social media?
2. What were some of the impacts from unrealistic beauty standards or edited images of celebrities and content creators?
3. What are some bad habits young people have picked up because of how normalized it has become on social media?

• In the past 5-7 years TikTok has grown in popularity, there has been lots of studies on how TikTok is affecting young adults and kids both good and bad. There are potential restrictions and even a ban on TikTok in the US because it’s owned by the Chinese Government, and there are lots of negative aspects of the app the has directly related to poor mental health or unhealthy/addictive habits.
• The main problem is how TikTok is making young adults unproductive and showing signs of depression, anxiety, and high stress levels. This research paper explores the results of studies from different countries and Universities and how much TikTok has had a more negative effect on people rather than enjoying humor like its intention.
• The methodology used was a wide range search for scholarly articles and studies found on the SVC website, Google Scholar, and University websites. 11 articles were put together and annotated to bring together a steady result for my research paper.
• The overall answer to this research question was TikTok does have major negative effects on mental health, physical health, and overall wellbeing. The most common trends of the research was the impact on peoples view on their body and mental health because they aren’t fitting the unrealistic beauty standards or fitting the trends that are popular.

For future research on this topic, there are a lot of negatives and the opposing sides sound better than the negative effects but look deeper into the overall well-being on mental health. There is a lack of research on other issues from TikTok like violence and bad behavior has become normalized, but the issue on body image is a great main focus. How is the newer generations going to act based on social media and the content they are consuming?

TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to create, share, and discover short videos, typically set to music. It was launched in September 2016 by the Chinese tech company ByteDance. TikTok, while hugely popular, has faced criticism and concerns regarding privacy and data security.

The app collects vast amounts of user data, raising alarms about its potential misuse, especially since its parent company ByteDance is based in China. This has led to proposed bans in countries like India and the U.S. due to national security concerns. Additionally, TikTok's algorithm-driven content has been linked to negative mental health impacts, especially among younger users, contributing to issues like addiction, unrealistic beauty standards, and unhealthy behaviors.

The platform has also struggled with misinformation and content moderation, with harmful content sometimes spreading easily. While TikTok offers entertainment and creativity, it also faces significant challenges related to privacy, mental health, and responsible use.

This video addresses the affects of a ban on TikTok in the US, taking away jobs, decreasing career advancements, and threatening freedom of speech and addressing this is important because it brings attention to the job decrease and restrictions on our freedom of speech which is in the Bill of Rights giving our government more power than they were supposed to have. 

Source Cite: CBS News. (2025). "How a TikTok ban would affect younger users, Gen Z". [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4a5vWCa9NM