Late night on Nov. 4, I deleted TikTok on impulse. An impulse, mind you, informed by a variety of other inputs, so perhaps it wasn’t as rash a decision as I’m making it out to be.
Seeing the black square disappear with a little flourish on my screen and the next app in alphabetical order file neatly in its place seemed so ridiculously simple in comparison to the complete grip the social media platform had on me for so long.
Is it really that easy to do away with a negative force in your life? Just press down on your screen for a second and tap “delete app?”
Yes and no.
I don’t intend to paint the app in a completely awful light. It is, of course, the user’s responsibility to, well, use responsibly. But the sinister aspects of TikTok can’t be ignored, either.
My use of the app had gone from a casual way to wind down every now and then to a blackhole that would suck up whatever free time I had. Hours would slip away into nothing, while my responsibilities and hobbies were left to collect dust.
As someone who is a skilled procrastinator, I discovered TikTok was the perfect enabler.
I found myself drawn to the app even when I had no real interest in going on it but doing so anyway to self-soothe the anxiety that procrastination runs on. All the while, I could sense the precious seconds slipping away into hours, the guilt that came with that realization and the paralysis of being unable to remove myself from the environment.
Every time warning would be ignored and I would keep scrolling on.
It all sounds dramatic, yet it’s a legitimate issue.
At this point, you may be wondering how someone so dangerously dependent on the app managed to delete it, or perhaps how they’d fare in the week without it.
Like everyone else at this hellish point in the semester, motivation is a scarce resource for me, but the workload continues to grow bigger and occupy a heavier grade weight. Definitely not a good combo.
I recognized that the way I was divvying up my time— and how much of it was to a screen— was ultimately unsustainable; I gave myself little time to complete the work I needed or to relax in any fulfilling way. And everyday would be the same cycle of hiding from the world behind, or rather, in front of my cellphone.
Hence the decision to delete the app like the hasty shutting of a door I didn’t want to go back through.
Surprisingly, the week has flown past, and I’m more confused than anything— how in the world was I able to get anything done before?
Yes, I had gone to class, met up my friends, went to club meetings, shopped for groceries and worked on my homework like any other week, only with no TikTok.
OK, perhaps my procrastinating tendencies leaked into other areas of my like, like spending more time curating random Spotify playlists or Pinterest boards or bingeing a TV show, but not to the same extreme. As well, all of these, in my eyes, were preferable to the mindless zombie scrolling I would often find myself trapped in with TikTok.
It’s almost silly how little I’ve missed an app that was taking up so much of my time.
I’ve had the same conversation with many people our age about TikTok’s brand of addictiveness that seems to boil down to one point: attention spans seem to be dwindling to nothing. Peers complaining about sitting through a ten minute YouTube video or even an inability to make it through a movie without checking their phones, are major red flags.
Of course, the app has its upsides— its strongest being an absolute goldmine of entertainment, almost every community imaginable and a source of genuinely comedic content.
That’s another issue with being removed from a platform like TikTok, where a new joke, song or audio is trending every other day: you tend to feel out of the loop. There’s been a few times I’ve met good friends by unintentionally referencing a TikTok inside joke in a conversation that they happened to also get, which would have flown over a non-TikTok user’s head.
But I figure until I get better discipline with my screentime and actively dedicate more of time to the hobbies I want to pursue, like knitting, writing and learning the keyboard, no TikTok for me.
If you’re not too happy with your screentime stats at the end of each week, ask yourself if you can go a day, two, or seven without using TikTok, or whatever your social media platform of choice is. If you find yourself struggling to make it through that one day, it’s time to make an effort to change that.
Delete the app, and try to engage with long-form media, like YouTube videos or an episode of TV show to work up your attention span. Hit the gym, or the books or the craft table— any alternative you can.
Soon you’ll find yourself wondering why you even used the app in the first place.