Whether you love it, fear it or hate it, TikTok has changed America and its 170 million users in the US have ensured that everyone hears about it. In 2019, the social media app’s downloads surpassed Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even Snapchat. The app has made it so that anyone can create a post in a short amount of time with just a few clicks. Thanks to TikTok’s famous trends and content where ordinary people can achieve celebrity status, it’s not surprising that people keep coming back to it.
While the app offers a great variety of possibilities such as recipes, dances and challenges, there are many incidents that TikTok trends bring to real life. A dangerous trend via TikTok is the “Benadryl Challenge” which encourages young kids to take massive amounts of pills in order to get high and have hallucinations. A 15-year-old girl from Oklahoma watched the so-called challenge on TikTok and decided to try it for herself as it had gone viral. She died later on due to an overdose and taking a lethal amount of Benadryl pills.
Another dangerous trend that has emerged on TikTok is the “Devious Lick Trend” which involves middle school, high school and even college students vandalizing and stealing school property. This trend gained a lot of attention in 2021 and made many students afraid to go to the bathroom. Some of the students involved in the trend reported that they simply did it to “fit in” as a desperate attempt at getting noticed.
Recently, five Assumption University students were faced with charges after allegedly trying to lure a man to their campus, framing him as a potential sexual predator and then attacking him. The students said what encouraged them to do it was the TikTok trend mimicking the TV series “To Catch a Predator.” The police said that the man who was accused of being a predator was in fact innocent and framed for just a TikTok trend.
One of the deadliest TikTok trends, the “Blackout Challenge,” has taken the lives of 20 children in 18 months. This challenge consists of choking yourself with any household items you can find until you lose consciousness and filming the process for people to see the adrenaline rush once the person regains consciousness. This trend is extremely dangerous as the number of deaths it has caused proves that the “trend” does not work and is just a call for another death situation.
TikTok trends have made people and students do horrible things to get noticed and gain popularity. The app has turned into a competition between image-obsessed people. They have become a dangerous tool to be used against people for clout.
This social media has taken the lives of many people to rise above people and gain followers. TikTok has made it possible to bring down someone’s reputation in just a few hours. With the popularity and amount of views a video can gain, the app has obtained the ability to ruin somebody’s life that might not even have TikTok.
Stay safe on social media and don’t disclose any personal information about yourself to strangers online. It is concerning how much TikTok trends affect people in real life. Harmful trends and challenges should be kept separate from our personal lives as there are a lot of potentially dangerous consequences.
