this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Do you know how many times I’ve heard the “designed to exploit the dopamine pathways” line? You know how much proof I’ve seen for that? Zilch, nada, nothing. Not a single source is ever provided to back that claim. Does that automatically mean it’s a false claim? No, but it’s definitely suspicious. From my limited time looking into it for myself all I can see is that TikTok does, in fact, produce a dopamine response. That’s it. None of the (very few, this is an under-researched subject) studies I have found even differentiate it from other sources of dopamine. Hell, one of the articles I saw used the amount of time a fucking hashtag stays on the trending list as an indicator of the degradation of attention spans. I trust I don’t have to explain how those two are only superficially linked.
Les see... there was music, tv, then DnD, then computers, then video games, and smartphones. Just in my lifetime. Remember how video games created a generation of psychopathic murderers? I have too many bodies to hide I tell ya...
Tik Tok's design clearly taps into psychological principles that drive addiction. The infinite scroll and unpredictable content rewards work like slot machines in a dopamine-driven feedback loop. This keeps users glued to their screens, often without realizing how much time has passed. The For You feed continuously adapts to like a million data tracking points, and spits out a constant stream of whatever content it deems most likely to keep you scrolling. Neuroscientists have pointed out that heavy TikTok use can reduce attention spans and increase the need for instant gratification which are effects tied to dopamine stimulation. Obviously bytedance isn't going to publicize the proprietary research they used to accomplish this. But the app clearly uses these engagement-maximizing techniques. That also goes for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit (they wish lol) and the rest of them. But in tiktok's case, it's an export from an adversarial nation, and you only need to look at the internally approved version of tiktok for Chinese users, which promotes a completely different kind of content.
Which neuroscientists are saying that? All the articles I’ve found referring to “TikTok Brain” quote one Dr. Patrick Porter. And I have become quite wary of trusting one man’s word, even that of a professional, since the whole vaccines cause autism thing.
Here are several studies, I have not read all of them but they are what I found:
https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/items/277e3219-85d2-41ac-92f3-4ac3745c1d58
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8820
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.641673/full
https://theoxfordblue.co.uk/tiktok-and-the-death-of-the-attention-span/
The first one is one that I didn’t find in my own time. It correlates heavy usage of TikTok with a decreased ability to block one’s own distracting thoughts. Certainly interesting, and worth further study, but the authors appear to have equated that correlation with a causal effect. They did not satisfactorily delineate between someone who has a poor attention span and is attracted to TikTok because of it and someone with a poor attention span caused by TikTok.
The second and third studies I have already addressed in my other comments. The second study being the Chinese one that demonstrated a correlation between heavy TikTok usage and memory loss, anxiety, stress, depression, etc. Again, important findings, but crucially not causal. The third is the meta analysis that refused to make a statements regarding detrimental effects of TikTok usage.
The fourth isn’t a study, it’s an article. This article does link to several studies, however the only one the directly mentions TikTok is, again, that same study of roughly 3,000 Chinese students. The rest of the studies mentioned are targeting social media use in general.
These articles and studies may be of interest to you
https://sites.brown.edu/publichealthjournal/2021/12/13/tiktok/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8010681/
https://www.psychreg.org/double-tap-dopamine-science-social-media-likes-impact-minds/
https://www.purewow.com/wellness/tiktok-brain-explained
You have linked a term paper, one study, and two articles. The study is a meta analysis that refuses to comment on the detrimental effects of TikTok usage due to a lack of research in the field in general. One article is about social media use in general and does not directly link to any scholarly works. The other does directly target TikTok and links to a study on Chinese students. There, TikTok Use Disorder was positively correlated with memory loss, anxiety, stress, and depression. Unfortunately my understanding of statistical analysis is not strong enough to judge the quality of the study, but to my limited knowledge it seems robust for its purposes. That being said, positive correlation does not necessarily prove causation. Notably, this study was a one time questionnaire. Meaning there isn’t any mechanism to determine the effects of high TikTok usage over time.
All this is to say that the field is deeply understudied, and that there aren’t any reliable conclusions that can be drawn yet. It may be that there are adverse effects, but that has yet to be proven.
So what you're saying is: We have a small sample of unreliable evidence that this thing may be absolutely detrimental to the developing brain. Thus, we should assume it's fine until we have more reliable evidence. Did I get that right?
No, you did not get that right. I’m saying there is a small body of evidence that may or may not indicate some detrimental effects and that we should conduct further research before jumping to conclusions. The claim that TikTok is rotting people’s brains is, as far as I can tell, unfounded. A claim being unfounded doesn’t strictly mean it is untrue, but it does mean there isn’t any real reason to be making the claim in the first place.
You are neglecting the cost-benefit of temporarily jumping to the wrong conclusion while waiting for more conclusive evidence though. Not doing anything because evidence that this is bad is too thin, and being wrong, can have severe long-term consequences. Restricting tiktok and later finding out that it has no detrimental effects has essentially zero negative consequences. We have a word for this principle in my native language - that if you are in doubt about whether something can have severe negative consequences, you are cautious about it until you can conclude with relative certainty that it is safe, rather than the other way around, which would be what you are suggesting: Treating something as safe until you have conclusive evidence that it is not, at which point a lot of damage may already be done.
You are making assumptions about what I am saying again. I am not advocating for more TikTok usage. At no point did I say anything positive about TikTok. What I am advocating for is people reaching a certain threshold of evidence before going around stating things as fact.