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TikTok epidemic

2020-02-27T23:33:13.821Z


How many books should our children read before having their first mobile? There is the only pin worth discussing


"Warning. This application can be highly addictive. ” This is the phrase with which TikTok invites on Twitter to download its application. Its objective is clear: to have as many people as possible. For what? The usual, sell things and earn money. And they are getting it at an unprecedented speed: it has taken much less than Facebook or Instagram to conquer the billion users in the world, more than four of them in Spain, of which 70% are under 24 years old. To understand us: TikTok seems to be to the social networks what the coronavirus to the flu. And what is addictive is no joke. On the contrary, there are a lot of people hooked, mostly children. It is a known thing in schools: "If you are not in TikTok, you are nobody."

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Well, the owners of this toy have agreed to pay a fine of 5.7 million dollars for illegally capturing data from minors. Since then, its legal bases require 13 years to download the application, because that is the age required in the US. It matters little that in Spain no minor has legal rights over the images he shares until age 14. No one has asked TikTok to adapt its legal bases to our legislation. Total for what, if any child of nine gets off lying to his parents' cell phone. That is when the child does not have his own smartphone .

So the little ones falsify their age to accept legal bases that leave them unprotected. From there, the application collects your information without parental consent: videos, email, phone number, location ... In the United States consider this way to expose the privacy of minors the worst of the worst. Among other things, because there everyone believes that their neighbor is a pedophile and is in TikTok following the trail of their offspring. Luckily, we are not like that. We are European, Spanish well informed to be exact. So we have taken the trouble to restrict the account of our offspring. “My son has TikTok, yes, but he only plays and shares videos with his school friends who are his age and who I know personally,” we say. Is there a problem?

I think so. And serious. Because TikTok is a tool whose objective is to generate residence time in front of a screen connected to the image itself. So it works like a sophisticated magic mirror. That is why the children say "if you are not in TikTok you are nobody". Because in fact, without TikTok they can't "see each other."

TikTok knows what 'challenge' the children are going to do before they even know him. Can you imagine how much a brand would pay for such a power?

We must recognize that the problem of the mirror comes from old. In Greek mythology, Nemesis punished Narcissus to fall in love with his own image. And he, dumbfounded, ended up throwing himself into the waters of the fountain where it was reflected. Of course, Narcissus was vain from birth - his character marked his destiny - while our children are generous and adorable. The problem is that thanks to TikTok all children will be daffodils. Because the algorithm of this network sends its videos to millions of people to admire them - it promotes vanity with military technology - and invites them to imitate what others do to compare themselves with them and try to overcome them compulsively.

To make matters worse, children do not do what they want when they are in TikTok but what the platform determines. Because unlike other networks, it decides the trends and communicates to the tiktokers the hashtags on which they should work. So TikTok knows what challenge the children are going to do before they even know him. Can you imagine how much a brand would pay for such a power? TikTok owners are already billing. That is why it is so important that the algorithm has more power than the user, because that makes the platform more profitable. And so we fall once more into the paradox of always: the smarter a technology is, the greater the volume of "dumb" users it needs to raise. Children are not dumb, but they are poorly educated. Perfect white.

That said, TikTok is cool to me, don't believe them. It is a fascinating universe full of content that houses a lot of creativity and good vibes. The thing is that I am not nine years old, nor 14. And besides, I have done something that everyone should do before stepping on any social network: I have built my identity by reading books. Remember? Those complex paginated devices that build citizens instead of consumers.

Unfortunately, digital natives are not lucky enough to build their identity as citizens, that luxury of the old. So the Chinese epidemic progresses and infects our children as we discuss the parental veto, the medieval bullshit that Vox has become fashionable while opening an account on TikTok. Because Santi is inside, more would be missing. Where there are poorly educated citizens, the greens have their best fishing ground.

Meanwhile, parents wonder about the age at which our children should have their first mobile. And I say what is happening to us? Let's say things once and for all. How many books should you read before having your first mobile? There is the only pin worth discussing. And the epidemic that needs to be safeguarded.

Nuria Labari is a journalist and author of The Best Mother in the World (Random House Literature).

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-02-27

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