There’s a one stop shop for all advice these days, and it goes by the name of TikTok. Whether you’re searching for a cooking recipe or advice on a potential existential crisis, there’s a creator online for it all. No, most of the time, they’re not certified in anything that offers credibility to the advice they offer, but there’s nothing quite like getting validated during a time you’re feeling low, regardless of who it’s from. And if there’s a topic that teens are always searching for advice on, it’s dating.
Coined “relationshiptok,” this niche of TikTok offers an escape from this touchy subject for young adults during a phase where they’re discovering more about their own preferences and even themselves. It establishes what a relationship should be like, setting standards, and conveying a strong theme that no one should settle for anything less than they deserve. And of course it goes without saying: the baseline advice is to never lower the non-negotiable standards that each person has for themselves.
While this is a valid perspective to reinforce, it’s recently evolved into what I consider an unrealistic expectation for love, creating rules and arbitrary tests that one must “pass” in order to prove they are a worthy partner. Now, it’s true that we’ve established the unreliability of social media, but for impressionable adolescents on the platform, it sets impossibly high standards for their potential partners. It pushes them to prioritize things they may not even have thought or cared about. What matters for one person may not be important to another, but these videos promote the idea that the ideal individual has to satisfy all these arbitrary criteria or do all these things in order to be the right partner.
The same idea goes for famous TikTok couples that choose to only share the best parts of their relationship with the world. They’re not obligated to share the problems or conflicts they undergo, but it can often create the false impression that they’re experiencing a perfect relationship, which is typically the furthest thing from the truth.
Various content creators have addressed the problem that this domain of TikTok has created, but with hundreds of relationship edits and reels released on the daily, their valid commentary gets drowned out.
It’s important to highlight that the foundation of this type of content is grounded in empowering individuals, their choices, and preferences, rooted in things like morals and common goals. This is a valuable message that should be spotlighted, but the entire situation has developed and framed into something it wasn’t meant to be. It’s setting up these young women for disappointment by setting very high standards for their partners that they might not even end up caring about ultimately.
I’m not a certified relationship manager or expert by any means, but the same goes for the creators putting out this type of content. At the end of the day, the content creators are also just people who are sharing their preferences, and their advice and standards should be taken into consideration with perspective and more than just a grain of salt.