Open Book: TikTok Goes The Clock

A Simple Cure-All For All That Ails You

By Anya Nitczynski

For the GPHN

You heard it here first! The new fix-all, cure-all, alleviation of pain is a simple thing: delete social media.

Actually, you’ve probably heard this rhetoric all over the place in the last few years. There are articles that details how social media can cause multitudes of problems, from unhealthy sleep patterns to inability to think straight. Rhetoric that social media is one of the worst habits you can have is not uncommon. So is social media really all that bad? And if so, why are we still so much in its clutches?

Social media is one of the fastest and convenient modes of connection there is today. It’s hard for me to believe that there aren’t any positive impacts of social media. I don’t believe the problems most people cite as grounds for leaving social media are what we should be focusing on.

Social media sensationalizes the important things. If there’s a mass shooting, there’s an infographic with the bloody details all over your feed that declares a goal of “raising awareness.”

One one hand, you probably came to social media to isolate yourself from the outside world, maybe because you read the news and it was simply too much that day. On the other hand, if you don’t repost it you obviously don’t care and you’re probably, like, a really terrible person or something. It becomes a limbo: and eventually you realize that it’s all bait for interaction and ultimately money — and that literally nothing you post on your Instagram story really matters.

Social media is really a place for people to scream their opinion into an abyss to feel like a better person. And the pressure of judgment is not the right reason to be “raising awareness.” When Charli D’Amelio, who has almost 150 million TikTok followers, changed her profile picture from one that was just the words “Black Lives Matter” to a photo of herself after over a year, the internet threw a fit. Yes, her platform is big. Yes, she should be using it for good. Yes, the legal adult can do a lot better than just a profile picture.

But it doesn’t matter. Not really.

It’s all fake and it’s all engineered. The reasons we hate social media should not be exclusive to the eye damage we may get from the screen time. The true and concerning fact of the matter is that social media allows for opinions to exist in a vacuum, and dangerous people to find the niche group that agrees with them, and enables them.

Always remember: You’re allowed to have opinions not formed by the internet.

Anya Nitczynski is a sophomore at Denver School of the Arts. Her column appears monthly in these pages.