How Is TikTok Impacting Teens’ Mental Health?

Most parents wouldn’t dream of letting their child eat an experimental new food or take a new medicine without seeing the research behind it—the controversy over kids and COVID-19 vaccinations over the past year has certainly proven many parents are wary of introducing new things into kids’ systems without knowing long-term effects.

Yet no one knows the long-term effect of social media. The medium has been mainstream for less than two decades, and little research has been done on the impact of gobbling up influencer feeds, DMs and the latest TikTok trends.

Surprisingly, parents seem OK with this.

The new documentary TikTok Boom, premiering tonight on PBS’s Independent Lens, explores the rise of TikTok by looking at its social-political, cultural and economic influences. Director Shalini Kantayya (Coded Bias) looks at how the social site, which is owned by Chinese AI company ByteDance, is impacting teens’ mental health, a subject that’s received little to no credible research. She also examines global political challenges to the platform and racial biases it faces.

She came to the project in an organic way. “I started using TikTok during the pandemic, like millions of Americans, and was both astounded by and terrified by how sticky and addictive the platform is,” Kantayya says. “Then, when I started hearing about Tik Tok sort of being in the crosshairs of a national security controversy, I started to wonder, ‘How does an app best known for teenagers dancing become the center of a geopolitical controversy?’ And that got me on the journey to make the film.”

TikTok has indeed become a staple of daily life for teens. Two-thirds say they have the popular social media app, according to Pew Research Center, and 16% claim to use it “almost constantly.”

But despite its popularity, it has faced skepticism. In 2020, the federal government threatened to ban the site, with then-President Donald Trump calling it a threat to national security, based on actions of its Chinese parent company. In 2022, several state attorneys general launched a probe into the potential impact of TikTok on kids’ mental health. But nothing substantive has arisen from the government action.

As Kantayya reveals, “we don’t know how this is impacting kids.” She points out that the Online Child Protection Act, passed in 1998, is outdated and ineffective as it relates to current technology. She worries social media sites are hiding research on how their products impact kids in order to protect their bottom lines. “Instagram knew that their technology, their algorithm, was causing eating disorders, higher levels of anxiety and depression, and they hid the data for two years till a whistleblower came forward,” she says.

Kantayya also notes that many parents are unaware of how much data the app can gather about their children. “When a company like TikTok starts collecting data about a child at age 10, by age 18, that algorithm might know your child better than you know your child,” she says. “And that is an incredible amount of power.”

In many ways, Kantayya says, her documentary is the story of Gen Z. No other generation will grow up in the same web Wild West (because presumably future generations will benefit from research and/or regulation). “I feel like it’s this massive, uncontrolled experiment, where this is your generation of children that are growing, coming of age online. To me, it’s this seismic shift in our humanity, and we’re not yet prepared for the change that’s happening,” she says.