Student Research Guide SPQ25/ Negative Influences of TikTok

After my research some of the major takeaways consist of:

• Understanding that there is no true way of getting rid of TikTok

• Misinformation can be spread much quicker through media 

• Our attention spans have shrunk significantly since release of the app

• TikTok does have negative effects towards mental health and physical health

• It's important to be aware of these negative impacts to be able to function around them or avoid them

• There are numerous ways to fill that void of boredom through other activities besides scrolling on TikTok

Some advice that I would give for future researchers is to not be frustrated. In my research, I found it difficult to get to the specifics when it came to TikTok but there are ways and loopholes to change your research questions to have better results. While most sources are opinion based, there are other forms out there that provide a wide range of background information to prove them to be trustworthy websites. Another piece of advice would be to look for topics that involve social media platforms not just TikTok. The reason why is because while it is important to stay on one topic at a time it's also important to compare and contrast TikTok to other social media apps. I could have cross-examined the times that users spend on TikTok and other apps to compare the two to show how addicting the app is. 

Through this process I found that my research experience went in between good and bad. While there are countless sources on the web that talk about how bad our phones are or how much screen time we spend on our phones, there are not too many specific sources, that are reliable, that talk about TikTok specifically. A lot of the times I would go through websites trying to find those trustworthy sources but many of them were opinion based rather than have statistical or other information to back-up their claims. What went well was being able to find information about how the app negatively influences mental health. With multiple sources related to the topic it sheds some light that the general population is aware that there's been a shift in everyone's mental health. The most interesting part to me was understanding how much misinformation is truly out there in social media and how quickly it is to do so. My interest in the topic changed in the way that I understand that with how technologically advanced we are as a society it becomes significantly more difficult to rule technology out to create a better environment. However, I strongly believe that being educated on the ways that TikTok or any other social media platform negatively impacts us can create better outcomes so we do not become too reliable on technology, have better physical health, and healthier headspaces.