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What do you do to unwind or to kill time during the day? I bet that the answer is going straight onto a social media app. It does not take a whole lot of brain power to scroll and be entertained by other people. There we can connect with others, help our moods, give us inspiration, or even contribute to it. During our time we spend on social media, have you ever wondered why you end up seeing the same things? Well, TikTok has a special algorithm that they use to make sure you are always entertained.

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Does TikTok Invade My Privacy?

I’m not sure if you noticed how the social media platforms always seem like they know everything about you. Even the things you have never told the app about. Do they listen to us or spy through our texts or emails? Some social media apps can do that, but with TikTok, their algorithm is so intense that they do not need to spy on you. First thing that the algorithm does is it tracks what you like. How might a computer do this without invading your privacy? Well, there are very specific things it does to make sure it learns you fast without listening to you or spying through your texts and emails. It begins with serving you with a bunch of popular videos to try and learn what your interests are.Then it narrows down the videos to less popular ones but they make sure it has the same hashtags and interests on the ones that you spent a little more time on then the others. It takes less than 2 hours for TikTok to learn who you are through this algorithm.

Always the Same Videos!!

If you think that the algorithm is crazy on how fast it learns who you are, it goes even more in depth than that. After TikTok knows who you are, it spends most of its time trying to bait you into staying on the platform by continually narrowing down your interests to a small niche so you can spend hours on the things that interest you. So you end up watching the same type of video over and over again. It can get so accurate into what you are interested in that it can pinpoint a specific animal that you love and give you hundreds of videos with that animal in it. 

Is TikTok Dangerous?

With the secret algorithm that TikTok uses, it is so easy to spend hours on it. Because of all the time spent, you may run into not having enough time to do the things you need to do. It can create extra stress in your life and build anxiety. Because of the intricate algorithm, if you are struggling with depression or anxiety, the TikTok app will feed you only those videos and can make it worse for the viewer.

TikTok can be a super fun way to kill time. There are many videos that are fun and worth your time. If you would like to see what experiment the Wall Street Journal did with TikTok, here is the video for that. 


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