Have you ever looked at people’s phone screens sneakily? A quick little glance can’t do much harm, right? Well, if you’ve been paying any attention, you will quickly pick up on how many people at our school watch TikTok!

Don’t you lie! We’ve all seen someone sitting around, eyes desperately glued to the unimaginably straining blue light beaming from their phone and radiating into their eyes. All they do is swipe and swipe! Scroll and scroll! This is called Doom Scrolling, and it’s a pretty popular hobby this generation.

But today, I will be sharing the thoughts through an eighth grader here at McCullough, Cole Hanley. Cole personally does not have TikTok, but he is aware of the significant effects it has on people like you and I. Cole says, “Because of short-formed content like TikTok, our generation’s attention span has reached an all-time low.” This is factual and backed up by studies. The human brain becomes very used to the short style of content, which leads us to lose our focusing ability.

Cole has also seen his fair share of people sucked into the wonders of their phones and not socializing with others. These same people are probably bummed out about the Cell Phone ban back in January. TikTok was being watched all the time in class which could’ve been part of the reason for the Cell Phone ban. But it’s not just TikTok, it’s other short-formed content like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and many other apps that make you lose your attention span and awareness of your surroundings.

Cole says that there are better alternatives to TikTok, which would be any longer-formed content. That way, you know what you will consume, and not crave the urge to scroll. Personally, there are many better social media sites than TikTok, like Reddit!

While this is a pretty bad situation, we can help solve this problem. Cole says, “By spreading awareness of the situation, we can bring attention to the problem.” This may seem unbeneficial, but it may be the reason we can save our generation. TikTok may be addictive to people of our age and can cause many cons, but we have to acknowledge people and what they consume online, and we can’t force them to change. Everyone has their preferences and it’s our job to respect that.