TikTok is an institution, and we are its humble students. The social media app TikTok harms today’s youth? That’s a lie.

AnnaClare Sung Contributor

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Though Canada has yet to pass any similar legislation (beyond preventing anyone with a governmentissued phone from using the app), I take personal preventative measures each day. Even if a ban goes into effect, a daily dosage of scrolling for an hour minimum will hopefully inscribe my mind with TikTok users’ numerous precepts. The algorithm assists in my success, presenting content just for me with a white satin glove. Amongst the odd celebrity drama or elaborate soap-making video, there are two types of TikToks that dominate my feed—lifestyle and news—each serving an essential purpose.

A pseudonym for individuals displaying their excess wealth, beauty, and other unobtainables, lifestyle TikToks, in their most primitive form, keep me fiercely humble while giving me something to work towards. “Outfit of the Day” videos (or more colloquially known as “OOTDs”) inspire my style, yet politely suggest that it’s unlikely I’d be able to pull off the pictured look.

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TikTok news shapes my critical thinking, feeding me information that tests my scepticism with a fun game of “Real or Fake?” And I know that if I study enough Tucker Carlson clips, I can learn how to effectively and carelessly get enough people to believe my lies––an attribute that will certainly be useful when I enter the corporate workplace, with companies like Enron and Raytheon as my ideal employers, of course. With- out these strangers’ OOTDs or fake (and actual) newscasters’ intelligible opinions, I’d be arrogant, lazy, poorly dressed, ignorant, unintelligent, and certainly not as humble. For my most redeeming attributes and presumably yours as well, we have the algorithm to thank.

If ever I’m upset by the reality that my family and friends cannot, unfortunately, read my thoughts, I receive the most wonderful consolation from the algorithm: A psychic mind that, somehow, just knows me I feel a kinship with this inanimate system like it’s a childhood companion I grew up with, someone who can sense my likes and dislikes without asking or invading my psyche, but who knows when I need some tough love and even harsh criticism. Excellent character and appearance are not the algorithm’s only irreplaceable contributions to the hordes of young people using TikTok daily. For academics like you and me, TikTok is the ideal mode of cultural production. The app is a place where artists create for other artists to consume at no economic cost. The algorithm ensures that the content gracing our screens matches our penchant for the highbrow. Evidently, people don’t use the platform to gain capital; each creator creates genuine art. What is a sponsored make-up routine if not a visceral reaction to, and expression of, beauty standards and gender roles or individuals reclaiming finances lost to the wage gap or opposing rampant stereotypes? Intellectual value saturates even a simple video of a gorilla eating a pineapple—providing an apt commentary on wild animals’ captivity and exploitation.

From CNN to Fox News, the usual rhetoric surrounding TikTok is all too negative (yet curiously, one of few things with bipartisan support in the United States). Without stealing and farming our data, the algorithm couldn’t feed us such personalized videos. How can something be so positively impactful on one’s appearance and attitude yet debilitating to their mental health?

We must end these harmful, propaganda-ridden ideas that further infect the media and general population with each new emerging “danger.” We must heed the truth: TikTok holds tremendous potential through which we can all learn and grow. If this absurd fear-mongering continues, Canada will be next in tow, falling down the same slippery TikTokban slope that the United States is currently falling into.

QUIZ: Guess these eight movie and TV characters, out of context

Here’s a hint: Each character is a university student—just like us!

4. ACAB, but this cop should quit and become a slam poet. Now that’s talent.

1. The next time you and your new friends chill out by the Roddick Gates, make sure to act like this character and start accusing them of trying to murder you. It’s not her fault—she’s just trying to look out for her loved ones after eight murders in their hometown. Her favourite subway station is the Burnside tunnel, but she’s worried a copycat killer is just around the corner— and there could be more than one. But don’t worry, McGill students! Her college campus looks exactly like yours, but this is Montréal, not New York.

2. This guy is a legacy at his university, but his best friend is still learning the ropes as a newcomer who can’t get into his program of choice. When his best friend bets his entire education on his misfit fraternity winning intramurals, this character reluctantly offers to help, knowing they might have to drop out if this plan goes badly.

3. Imagine you didn’t get into McGill, or even Harvard—your safety school. What now? For this character, the answer is to create their own university and fool their parents in the process. It’s easy! All you need is a children’s shoe salesman to teach your ethics class, a friend who can blow up your enemy’s car with his mind, a comp sci student to make your dupe website, and some cash to bribe your little sister to keep her mouth shut. This is legal… right?

5. This character is a tech-savvy, rebellious media studies major at an Ivy League university where most students are white— she, as well as the film’s three other main characters, are Black. Armed with her intelligence and a campus radio show to snarkily respond to their classmates’ racism, her activism leads to an explosive Halloween party. I guess it’s hard for some people to hear the truth.

6. While people now may call this character a lizard man in real life, know that he was once a respectable Harvard student on academic probation. It wasn’t his fault—he was only trying to get revenge on his girlfriend. Of course, that turned into making a creepy rating website for girls in his class, which turned into making a flop dating website for Ivy League schools, which turned into making the biggest social platform of our generation. But who needs friends IRL when you can make friends online?

7. Whether it’s battling the knowit-alls in class, facing the condescending boyfriend who thinks he’s going to be president, or befriending the he’s-definitely-not-my-type-but-why-am-I-attracted TA, there’s a bit of all us in this student. From California to Massachusetts, they’re all about dedication, loyalty, and the power of believing in yourself, with more than a little sparkle thrown in. Riddle us this: What do you get when you mix impeccable hair-perming knowledge, a trusty sidekick, an unrelenting pursuit of the family rock, and a gleaming French mani? The correct answer: One kick-ass lawyer.

8. Imagine this: Elie Saab gowns, high tea at the Ritz, and a boyfriend who doesn’t believe in feelings (other than feeling like “you betrayed him” when all you were trying to do was protect what he cares about most—but now he’s saying you were what he cared about most—but it didn’t look like that way when Jack was here and now… anyway). Who needs class when you have a city to run, princes to fend off, and schemes to be schemed? All with the help of an elusive local blog that can’t get enough of you and your friends.