I see the view you express here pretty frequently--that older generations have /always/ viewed any new cultural development as a sign of moral/intellectual degradation, and--surprise!--it never really is. I do tend to agree that most fears about the new crop of addictive social media engagement engines is just handwringing, just like it was for TV, or music, or radio, or books.

That being said, just because coffee and methamphetamine have comparable effects on paper doesn't mean that they pose the same level of risk. A difference of degree is still a difference, and at least from my own experiences I'm starting to wonder if the human brain is biologically equipped to handle the addictive overstimulation modern life exposes it to.

> a sign of moral/intellectual degradation, and--surprise!--it never really is.

I'm not sure how you'd measure that... Right now there seems to be a heart disease and obesity epidemic, which I understand is primarily due to sugar and processed foods, but I find it hard to believe the massive amounts of TV watching and computer use plays no role in that, if not a significant one.

With TV, there was also the passivity effect, people were just fed a diet of propaganda with little way to do much about it, whereas now at least there's some choice although I'm not sure we're much better off and what the tradeoffs are. Prior to TV and radio, people weren't very educated at all, so it's kind of hard to compare. We don't get the science experiments we need out of natural development.

Then, I can't know but I wonder if a society where more reading and radio wouldn't be better in some important ways.

Then, yeah what if TV is like coffee but a certain kind of Internet use does turn out to be like a more addictive drug...

Are you sure TV didn't rot our brains?

Social media addiction is a very real thing and tiktok does it better than any of its competitors.

I've heard this but it doesn't match my experience at all. I see far more addictive behaviour on facebook or twitter (or, hell, HN).

Have you used tiktok? There’s nothing about it that isn’t addictive.

Facebook, Twitter, and HN hold a different behavior because they are used for asynchronous communication between general users while TT is full of parasocial relationships between the created and fans. FB and Twitter also offer more utility than TikTok, an example being small businesses using Facebook and Twitter instead of a website.

> Have you used tiktok? There’s nothing about it that isn’t addictive.

I tried it for a week or so, found it not very interesting and gave up.

I noticed that the webapp doesn't show personalized content (or my privacy extensions do a wonderful job). You have to use the mobile app to see the full power.

This was with the mobile app.

It took me a month before TT actually figured out my interests. For some reason it thought I would be absolutely interested in the local content of Latvia (where i live)

I created a TikTok account with a VPN and for the first few days most of the content was tailored towards the faraway city that the VPN IP address pointed to. Geolocated IP is one of the few pieces of info TT has initially, so not surprised they rely on it.

I also used tiktok for about a month but quit it. That's not to say it's not addictive though, my mom spends a significant amount of her free time on the app (but she still uses fb and ig, if anything tiktok just supplanted some of her time spent on ig). I suppose my point about it is that it's not absurdly unique compared to reddit, YouTube, or twitch which are similarly bottomless content holes.

TT isn't unique in parasocial relationships though. Most of the discourse around those relationships actually center around yt and twitch for a reason (and to a lesser extent twitter and onlyfans). If anything tiktok is better than streaming platforms because there's less of that illusion of familiarity; you only see the content creator for minutes at a time before another's there to replace them (twitch you see them for hours at a time and often people only identify strongly with a few streamers).

I'd also argue against the utility argument. Tiktok has allowed for both information and misinformation to spread on its platforms, but that's a non unique argument. Small business accounts on tiktok have also flourished, a commonly repeated piece of advice currently is for small business owners to create accounts and just record their daily routines. Businesses like specialty stationers have exploded in recognition due to this.

The much stronger case against tiktok over other social media's is your communication point. There's little opportunity there for people to actually, you know, socialize with each other. It's content and only content, and even YouTube comments have more meaningful opportunities for educated discussion. It's more similar to twitch chat in that regard but even on twitch content creators regularly engage in discourse publicly. Tiktok enables this through its reply system, but because of its content delivery system you might never see that.

Ya, I also used tiktok for about a month before getting rid of it. I still think my point stands that everything about it makes it addictive.

TT is a bottomless content hole and isn’t that different from other bottomless content holes because they are that. TT takes it a step further with their format focusing on short, attention grabbing content, a best-in-class recommendation algorithm, and rewarding their creators with more views than other networks.

I don’t know if I agree Tiktok fosters better (do we mean healthier?) parasocial relationships than other socials. There’s a certain intimacy from the cell phone camera that YouTube and twitch doesn’t have (twitch has a different intimacy, but like you said they are on for hours a time). I think when TT creators are encouraged to upload multiple times a day, compared to once a week on YouTube or twitch, pushes something that feels closer seeing a best friend than watching your cool cousin.

I absolutely agree that TikTok is better for marketing a business than other networks, but it doesn’t have much of any utility beyond that. I wonder about the effectiveness of communicating over DM with businesses over Instagram vs tiktok.

For the record I’m addicted to YouTube and HN and don’t currently have accounts on any of the other services mentioned.

Lol I'm also addicted to YT (not proud of it, but the amount of well-produced, solid educational content makes it a hard habit to kick).

I think TT's algorithm is the strongest selling point. Vine had even shorter content and even faster dopamine hits but ultimately died (I can't recall if Music.ly died or was absorbed before it met a natural fate). I can't speak towards monetization but I hazard that TT creators still make most of their money from sponsorships (like twitch and YT) based on that one Hype House thing. That said, the algorithm might be a bit overstated in its strength. Put enough creators together on the same place all trying to be relatable, add in the fact that people are going through dozens if not hundreds of videos at a time, you're bound to yield several hits. In this sense, I think TT is successful not directly because of its format, but in that it's achieved a critical mass because of its format, and that critical mass allows it to easily perpetuate itself.

I think the parasocial relationships aren't "better", except that TT is "better" than Twitch and YT because it's harder to develop these parasocial relationships. Maybe your theory about phone cameras is correct, but I think what's absent is that sense of _address_. On YT, creators will often call their viewers under some aggregate nickname, or make direct references to their audience in a way that invites closeness. Combine this with frequent references to their fanbases as "communities" and I think that YT and Twitch have developed something of a cultural illusion that TT has not yet developed (again, mostly second-hand as I no longer frequent the platform). Again, this remains to be seen, but I lean towards seeing IG as the model here: where you can have similarly frequent posts, cellphone livestreams, and videos (and now shorts). However, since IG is usually not criticized as heavily for parasocial relationships as YT and Twitch, I really think that the difference maker is the systems of address and sense of community that, at the very least, has not fully developed on TT.

Twitter doom scrolling is real.

Back when we only had TV, we weren't sharing videos of ourselves twerking, crying, and doing illegal, controversial, or questionable things as children with the entire world... Things are different now in many ways.

This drive to post personal content to the entire world (in order to be popular) is pretty harmful, lasts potentially forever, and can be devastating to reputation for children and even adults in years ahead...