“Tik Tok he is taking our children hostage.” With these words, the Albanian prime minister Edi Rama decided to block the Chinese application for a year, thus anticipating the United States. “He is the neighborhood delinquent – he continued – whose company parents fear for their children but who always manages to be the most attractive character of childhood”. And not only that. Because more and more adults hang out on Tik Tok, enjoying dances and crazy challenges. And so they waste time. They don’t realize that time passes around them and will never return. That those minutes – five more, then that’s it – are gone forever. Tik Tok, then. Like the hands of the clock. Tik Tok, like the worm of curiosity that keeps us glued to the smartphone. Because, in the end, we choose it. Or maybe not. According to what was gathered by Republican Attorney General Russel Coleman, “Tik Tok was specifically designed to be a addiction machineaimed at children who are still in the process of developing appropriate self-control. It doesn’t take long for our children to fall headlong into a digital world of unrealistic beauty standards, bullying and low self-esteem.” Also because the version of Tik Tok used in the West is radically different from the one used in China (and perhaps the time has come to ask ourselves why).
The lawsuit brought by Coleman also states that this social network “intentionally manipulates the release of dopamine in the developing brains of young users and causes them to use Tik Tok excessively, compulsively and addictively, damaging them both mentally and physically.” Impairing their ability to concentrate on the real world and also affecting their ability to read and write.
Just look around to see more and more smombiesthe smartphone zombies, who can’t take their eyes off the screens.
Who move from Instagram to Tik Tok. Waiting for a like they don’t receive. And that hurts. Or of a message that is slow in arriving and that creates anxiety, the great disease of this century. Tik Tok, therefore. And time passes. Tik Tok. And he never comes back.