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TikTok App on iPhone
TikTok App on iPhone
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SBU | Culture > Entertainment

TikTok Needs to GO!

Katie McKee Student Contributor, St. Bonaventure University
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at SBU chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

I remember when I was in 8th grade, everyone in all of my classes was talking about this new app that they had been on for the past few months. They were all obsessed with it.

This was my introduction to TikTok.

I was convinced it wouldn’t be anything crazy. It’s just another random app that they would spend countless hours on, just like any other addiction to Instagram or Snapchat. 

Even at such a young age I knew this. TikTok wasn’t necessary, and so many people were wasting their time and getting distracted on this silly little app. 

Don’t worry, though it wasn’t immediately, it didn’t take long for me to hop on this trend. A few months later you could find me avoiding my homework and no longer spending as much time on Instagram, but scrolling endlessly on TikTok. 

Now, almost seven years later, I still have TikTok, and my obsession definitely hasn’t lessened. Brain-rot is brain-rotting. 

Though I have never had a huge presence on TikTok, never really using it to keep track of friends, or see what they are posting, I have loved watching the popular ‘influencers.’

This makes it even more of a problem.

Social media should be, if anything, about seeing what the people you know are up to. Maybe it’s the people you are having classes with everyday, or the people you haven’t seen in 10 years, but it should be these people you know. 

But for me, Tik Tok isn’t that. 

It’s the place where random people, I think I know, are giving me advice or just a good laugh or even cry. 

The more I have grown the more I have realized the true insignificance of social media. 

Yes, it does teach me something new almost every single day. Yes, it does spread awareness about topics that are not being talked about enough. Yes, I do get to watch people in my dream profession do their thing and be successful.

And yes there is always that small part of me that always says, at LEAST once a day, “I think that I could become an influencer,” throwing all of my opinions out the window.  

But in reality, there is no point. One of the greatest things you can do is actually be in the moment, making memories with those people around you, and finding things that actually make you happy in the long run. 

Such a heavy reliance on social media is causing problems too. We now have to go through everything, even more so than before, and decide what is true and fake. People lie to become popular, or to get you angry, or to make their opinion seem better, and we have to decipher what is true and what is not every single day. 

Until that one day comes for me, which I do truly hope is soon, so I can make even more memories, I will still be an avid user of this platform we have all grown to love and hate, no matter how much it needs to go.

Katie McKee

SBU '27

Katie McKee is a sophomore member of Her Campus in the St. Bonaventure chapter. In her first semester in Her Campus she plans on writing about her experiences, movies, books, college, and anything else that makes her happy.

Katie is an Inclusive, Early Childhood and Childhood Education major, with a concentration in math. She is a member of both Bona Buddies and Club Soccer at SBU. She has always enjoyed journaling, and is excited to see what Her Campus has to offer.

In her free time, Katie likes to spend time with her friends on campus, and values her time at home with family. She loves reading a good romance or historical fiction, like “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid, listening to her favorite artists, like Noah Kahan and the Lumineers, or playing a good board game.