Chaplain's Corner
Louise Lathbury
CHILDREN AND SOCIAL MEDIA- TIKTOK
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a social network that allows users to create and upload their own videos where they lip-synch to popular songs, sing, dance, or just talk. Users can interact with other users' content.
How does TikTok work?
Users sign up with a phone number, email address, or a third-party account (Facebook or Instagram). Once logged in, users can search popular creators, categories (comedy, animals, sports), and hashtags to find videos and use their own phone contacts or social media followers to find friends already on the app. Users may create and post videos themselves OR use the app to follow other people’s content.
Did you know:
(1) by April this year, the TikTok app had been downloaded more than 2 billion times worldwide.
(2) Around 1.6 million Australians use the app, including about one in five people born since 2006. That’s an estimated 537,000 young Australians.
(3) During the COVID-19 pandemic, TikTok has had huge numbers of videos with coronavirus-related hashtags such as #quarantine (65 billion views), #happyathome (19.5 billion views) and #safehands (5.4 billion views).
(4) Like all social media apps, TikTok siphons data about its users such as email addresses, contacts, IP addresses, and geolocation information.
Positive aspects:
(1) The TikTok app fills a social need and offers a sense of belonging.
(2) TikTok celebrates diversity and can provide a place where young people can join together to support each other.
(3) The focus on planning and creating content encourages the creative use of technology.
(4) Planning and filming a video together can be a fun parent-child activity.
Negative aspects:
(1) Children are engaged in a space where others can contact them.
(2) Children may engage in adult concepts that they are not mature enough for. (3) Quantity of content uploaded each day can be distracting and lead to cognitive overload.
Safety tips:
(1) Use privacy settings and the ‘TikTok for younger users’ for children under 13 (https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-au/tiktok-for-younger-users).
(2) Ensure the content uploaded doesn’t have negative implications.
(3) Remember that TikTok does collect data from your activity.
Food for thought: The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in a recent blog article used the term ‘co-mingled’ to describe social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. As parents, we are careful about monitoring the interaction of our children with unknown adults in real-life settings, like the park, shopping centre, or swimming pool. Some cyberspace interactions can have devastating consequences, so perhaps we can be more vigilant in monitoring these.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/blog/limiting-your-childs-exposure-social-media-sometimes-hardest-smartest-move) https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-tiktok
https://www.digitalthumbprint.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/OPTUSDTP_ParentGuide_TikTok-04.pdf
https://thecybersafetylady.com.au/2019/02/is-tiktok-safe-for-kids/