#TikTokChallenge
By Jeremy K. Elsmore | May 2023
“But, Mom! All my friends are going. Why can’t I go too?” “If all your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you follow?”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I’m sure most of us remember having a similar conversation with our parents related to peer pressure or what all our friends were supposedly doing. It seemed straightforward and obvious that we wouldn’t follow our friend into an unsafe situation. Unfortunately, for teens today, “the cliff” is much more confusing to identify and difficult to avoid. Case in point: TikTok challenges.
Social media platforms, such as TikTok, use addictive algorithms to show us what we want to see. Influencers manipulate these algorithms through novel, dangerous and sensational challenges they create to accumulate more followers and make more money. To adults, with our fully developed prefrontal cortex, it seems obvious which challenges would be prudent to avoid. In the case of amygdala-driven teenage brains, however, peer pressure overrides the logical thought processes, leading to too many students participating in these emotional and sometimes life-altering social media challenges.
If you’re not familiar with TikTok, it’s a social media platform that allows you to make, share and discover short-form mobile videos. Think of it as a video version of Twitter. You can find almost anything on TikTok, from recipe ideas to short lessons in jiujitsu. Like any social media tool, there is also a dark side of TikTok. New challenges pop up every day that students will participate in. Some of them are innocent, such as dance challenges, but others aren’t so safe. These challenges have led students to do everything from stealing something from school to trying to blackout by tying something around their necks, from taking excessive amounts of Benadryl to placing bags of bleach on their eyes.
We have a responsibility to educate students to avoid situations that might cause them physical, emotional, mental and social harm.
Talking to adolescents about TikTok dangers without ever using TikTok won’t be very productive, however. I recommend signing up for TikTok to experience it yourself. Students won’t listen to you teaching them about TikTok if you know nothing about it.
The safest way to explore TikTok without getting hooked on it and wasting too much of your own time is to use the desktop version (www.TikTok.com). The desktop versions of TikTok and other social media apps aren’t able to create the same Pavlovian responses as they do on our phones. The way in which the apps refresh and push notifications to us tends to be much less captivating on the desktop. Of course, you’ll want to avoid following students’ accounts or letting them follow any of your private/personal accounts on social media.
Call in Reinforcements
The two biggest online safety messages we should communicate to students, about TikTok and other social media platforms, are:
You can’t solve a systemic issue like this without bringing parents to the table. Parents need to know what is going on in their children’s world. Holding a parents-only night is best; you don’t want to spread information to students who may not already know about these online challenges. We need to empower parents. They need tools and prompts they can use to help their kids understand these dangers. Go over scenarios with them and help them role play how to talk to their children about the subject. Don’t worry, they will know exactly what their child will say in response, and acting it out will help build their confidence.
We also need to communicate with other school counselors and share our experiences. If you see a trend happening, reach out to your online or in-person school counseling community. Odds are you will find some good ideas on how to improve the situation. One of the most underestimated tools out there is the ASCA Scene website, where we can connect with other school counselors and work together to keep students safe.
Working together, with parents and other school counselors, we can help limit students’ risky behaviors.
Jeremy K. Elsmore is a middle school counselor at Silverland Middle School, in the Lyon County School District, Nev.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I’m sure most of us remember having a similar conversation with our parents related to peer pressure or what all our friends were supposedly doing. It seemed straightforward and obvious that we wouldn’t follow our friend into an unsafe situation. Unfortunately, for teens today, “the cliff” is much more confusing to identify and difficult to avoid. Case in point: TikTok challenges.
Social media platforms, such as TikTok, use addictive algorithms to show us what we want to see. Influencers manipulate these algorithms through novel, dangerous and sensational challenges they create to accumulate more followers and make more money. To adults, with our fully developed prefrontal cortex, it seems obvious which challenges would be prudent to avoid. In the case of amygdala-driven teenage brains, however, peer pressure overrides the logical thought processes, leading to too many students participating in these emotional and sometimes life-altering social media challenges.
If you’re not familiar with TikTok, it’s a social media platform that allows you to make, share and discover short-form mobile videos. Think of it as a video version of Twitter. You can find almost anything on TikTok, from recipe ideas to short lessons in jiujitsu. Like any social media tool, there is also a dark side of TikTok. New challenges pop up every day that students will participate in. Some of them are innocent, such as dance challenges, but others aren’t so safe. These challenges have led students to do everything from stealing something from school to trying to blackout by tying something around their necks, from taking excessive amounts of Benadryl to placing bags of bleach on their eyes.
We have a responsibility to educate students to avoid situations that might cause them physical, emotional, mental and social harm.
Talking to adolescents about TikTok dangers without ever using TikTok won’t be very productive, however. I recommend signing up for TikTok to experience it yourself. Students won’t listen to you teaching them about TikTok if you know nothing about it.
The safest way to explore TikTok without getting hooked on it and wasting too much of your own time is to use the desktop version (www.TikTok.com). The desktop versions of TikTok and other social media apps aren’t able to create the same Pavlovian responses as they do on our phones. The way in which the apps refresh and push notifications to us tends to be much less captivating on the desktop. Of course, you’ll want to avoid following students’ accounts or letting them follow any of your private/personal accounts on social media.
Call in Reinforcements
The two biggest online safety messages we should communicate to students, about TikTok and other social media platforms, are:
- You can’t fully delete anything you post online.
- All it takes is one sexually explicit picture sent online to potentially be exploited.
You can’t solve a systemic issue like this without bringing parents to the table. Parents need to know what is going on in their children’s world. Holding a parents-only night is best; you don’t want to spread information to students who may not already know about these online challenges. We need to empower parents. They need tools and prompts they can use to help their kids understand these dangers. Go over scenarios with them and help them role play how to talk to their children about the subject. Don’t worry, they will know exactly what their child will say in response, and acting it out will help build their confidence.
We also need to communicate with other school counselors and share our experiences. If you see a trend happening, reach out to your online or in-person school counseling community. Odds are you will find some good ideas on how to improve the situation. One of the most underestimated tools out there is the ASCA Scene website, where we can connect with other school counselors and work together to keep students safe.
Working together, with parents and other school counselors, we can help limit students’ risky behaviors.
Jeremy K. Elsmore is a middle school counselor at Silverland Middle School, in the Lyon County School District, Nev.