CLEVELAND — In the world of social media, TikTok is relatively new.

What You Need To Know

  • TikTok has 1.2 billion active users every month 

  • The app can affect children's decision making 

  • Children are more vulnerable to be influenced by what they see on the app
 

But since its creation in 2016, it’s quickly climbed the charts when it comes to popularity.

Data shows TikTok has about 1.2 billion active users every month, that’s more than X and Instagram.

And the people who use it, tend to spend more than an hour a day on it.

“The way TikTok is set up to have really brief, really intense, really sort of easily available engagement in videos adds to that dopamine release, adds to that sort of inconsistent but always available input into your brain and so it just sort of feeds on itself,” said Mary Gabriel, a child and adolescent psychiatrist for University Hospitals.

She said she has noticed the impact the app has had on her patients.

“You get constant feedback in the form of likes, comments and notifications. I mean, those are frequent, but they’re inconsistent and that is the combination that reinforces a behavior,” Gabriel said.

In many cases, the app as a whole and the challenges in particular add to the peer pressure children can face at school.

And Gabriel believes it’s a big reason why she’s seeing more kids these days either facing depression or anxiety-related issues.

“When you ask them, you do a history you try and find out what’s going on, what brought this on that you’re now here with us, inevitably, a significant contributor ends up being social media and in more recent, probably within the last year and a half to two years, TikTok is the most prevalent,” Gabriel said.

And there’s science behind the impact. Gabriel points to one area of the brain that usually doesn’t become fully developed until people reach their mid-20s. Until then, she said their decision-making process may not be as logical or as rational, leading them to be more vulnerable to be influenced by what they see on the app.

“There is a perception that number of likes, number of followers equals value. So somebody who has a large number of followers, hits or likes, they are more valuable, or what they have to say has more value than someone else,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel said all of this reinforces the need for parents to monitor the content their children are consuming and limit the amount of time they spend on the app.