Social media apps are keeping scientists (and parents) off their backs via time limitation features. But are they enough to deter tech savvy digital natives?
Last week, social media juggernaut TikTok announced that users under 18 will soon have their TikTok screen time limited to one hour a day— a sharp divergence for an app designed to keep users scrolling for as long as possible.
The decision follows years of scrutiny on the effect social media can have on the mind, particularly the adolescent, still developing brain. Research has shown that spending significant time on social media rewires the brain’s neural pathways, thus diminishing our attention spans.
Studies have also substantiated what’s long been expected; that social media is highly addictive. The way TikTok and Instagram play on the human brain’s dopamine receptors parodies gambling slot machines. “In psychological terms it’s called random reinforcement,” Sociologist Dr Julie Albright told Forbes Magazine. “We don’t often talk about how our devices and these platforms and these apps do have these same addictive qualities baked into them.”
The content on social media is also of grave concern– not only are TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram and co a hotbed of problematic beauty standards, self-harm content, and hate, but the apps (particularly TikTok) are swimming in with far-right conspiracy theorists primed to ensnare new recruits. So the idea that apps should set limitations to ensure the safety and wellbeing of users is a welcome (and long awaited) one.
On Instagram, users have long had the option to set a reminder for themselves when they’ve spent a certain amount of time on the app. TikTok—who’s time limit reminder is mandatory— are going a step further. But an hour a day on TikTok— which accounts to about 30 hours a month— is still a colossal time spent scrolling. Research into the app has revealed that users (most of whom are between the ages of 16-24) spend an average of 50 minutes a day on the app, meaning the 1 hour limit won’t so much as make a dent in most users’ screen time. What’s more, users can opt to bypass the 1 hour mark by entering a password… set by them.
TikTok claims that in trials, the active decision to enter the password and therefore acknowledge how much time a user has spent on the app was enough to dramatically reduce screen time. But will it stand the test of time? Although the feature may initially encourage users to second guess their online behaviors, entering the password could rapidly become second nature, a bridge to another round of dopamine hits. “I have time limits set. I tend to click ignore, which I probably shouldn’t do. After I click them a few times, I’m like OK, maybe there’s a problem!” 15-year-old Sophia told CBS news.
The existing rules for “TikTok’s under-13 experience,” are more stringent. A purportedly “age appropriate TikTok environment,” the watered down version of the app has a 60 minute time limit, which, when reached, can only be extended by a parent or guardian. But 1 hour is still a colossal chunk of time. Under 13 brains are more malleable to social media than the 14-18 age bracket, so a uniform hour limit suggests that the app is still putting profit over people.
On Instagram, parents can set daily time limits or schedule breaks for their children, see who their child follows/ who follows them, and be notified when their teen reports something. TikTok is also working with parenting, youth, and civil society organizations to develop a feature which will enable parents to censor videos associated with certain words or hashtags.
But Young people today are tech-savvy digital natives. Many already have two Instagram accounts, the private “finsta” (fake Instagram account) and the primary account, so can simply hop from one to the other if their parents attempt to impose a time limit. Many parents are entirely ignorant to their children’s finstas. Creating a second TikTok account is just as simple. What’s more, most words on TikTok which have been banned or limited simply recur under purposely incorrect misspellings, like “seggs” in lieu of “sex.” It’s hard to imagine that guardians will have the capacity to keep up to date on the app’s convoluted dialect.
Parents are having to balance making sure they can contact their children on the streets, and making sure they’re not exposed to even more ominous dangers online. Given the impact social media, which is still in its infancy, is having on young brains—not to mention the thus far undiscovered effects—it’s reassuring that social media titans are working to safeguard their apps, but we’ll likely need more than an optional one hour limit to stymie social media’s peril. It is of course possible that TikTok’s safety efforts will have been in vain, as just a few days ago the U.S. House panel granted President Biden the power to ban TikTok entirely, as concerns that the company is giving American data to the Chinese government grow.
