Imagine millions of teenie boppers twerking away and losing their entire identities in one fell swoop if the TikTok ban goes through.
While the thought of that might be too much to bear for all of those baring too much in the first place it seems a novel idea. Preciously beautiful to force kids to be kids. It might be too late.
Perhaps a teen tech wizard is in his parent’s basement working on the next TikTokky app that will keep up with the jones and keep this strange keeping on, but perhaps not. Perhaps there will be a lull of boredom or sheer terror.
Oh no – ? What will these kids do with themselves? And granted I know it’s not all kids on TikTok at least not little ones. I’ll give you this, there are big kids on there too, but my qualm is with the little ones, well their parents really.
So much for having children and actually parenting them full time. I suppose those days are over.
So many directions to point the finger. It’s the age of technology so perhaps we can blame it all on Silicon Valley if we don’t want the onus on us as parents. Or perhaps we can blame the kid’s friend’s parents cause they let the friend do it. Or we can blame it on our dead beat husband or marital status or lack thereof, single parenting is not for the meak, but TikTok also should not be your go to babysitter.
Children should not be allowed agency over devices to troll and stream and feast on whatever their eyes can see, especially with all of the obscene absurdity that is latent on the internet these days. Even those child blockers miss things so never
For me I can dream a little dream of children being children, playing like we used to in rivers and streams rather than live streaming up a storm. I can imagine a time when kids used to be kids and we were sweet and innocent and not hyper sensitive to every little thing cause every little thing is now moving at the speed of light. Youtube shorts are quickly taking over long form video content on the platform cause even adults in this day and age are losing their ability to focus on anything for more than 12 seconds.
Serial users stroll at a rate of 3-4 seconds per clip.
And what does this all say about us, about humanity, about how we live and how we show up, our lack of connection to one another, our inability to be present and our overwhelming need to be constantly looking for the next best thing which leads to our inevitable dissatisfaction with everything.
I think it says a whole hell of a lot.
And in that bent I’ll just say I look forward to a day that TikTok goes away and perhaps a few, even just a few of the few millions of kids have to figure out how to really play.
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Checkout this previous posts – Too Much Tech
