Here is how it works.
Kids, especially young girls want to be seen and be "popular". They put out short videos which are harmless and cute. They get some likes. Then they get more likes. After some time the likes reduce. But they are addicted to likes. So what to do? Easy, for a girl who is 16+, the easiest way is to put our more risque videos. Likes shoot up. Comments from men increase. Addictive. The kid sees the correlation: More exposure, more likes and comments. It goes on and on.
Next stop: onlyfans.

Many friends of mine who have teen daughters allow their kids to post TikTok videos. One kid told me how she was addicted to it, when I was driving a tennis carpool for her and my daughter.

I have banned TikTok for my 13.5-year-old daughter. Heck, I must be the only parent in the country to not give their 13-year-old daughter a cell phone! Yes, no cell phone now, she will get one when she gets to High School. I keep her occupied with academics and sports. Nothing is 100% but if she gets validation from real achievements, the probability to crave it from TikTok like apps from strangers would be reduced.


Teen Girls' Sexy TikTok Videos Take a Mental-Health Toll
https://www.wsj.com/articles/teen-girls-sexy-tiktok-videos-take-a-mental-health-toll-11644016839

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When Jula Anderson joined TikTok at age 16, her first video featured her family's home renovations. It got five likes. After seeing others post risqu videos and get more likes, she tried it, too.
"I wanted to get famous on TikTok, and I learned that if you post stuff showing your body, people will start liking it," Jula, now an 18-year-old high-school senior near Sacramento, Calif., said.


Jula Anderson in her backyard near Sacramento, Calif.
Photo: Chloe Aftel for The Wall Street Journal
Sudden TikTok fame is catching teens off guard, leaving many girls unprepared for the attention they thought they wanted, according to parents, therapists and teens. In some cases, predators target girls who make sexually suggestive videos; less-dangerous interactions can also harm girls' self-esteem and leave them feeling exploited, they say.

Mental-health professionals around the country are growing increasingly concerned about the effects on teen girls of posting sexualized TikTok videos. Therapists say teens who lack a group of close friends, and teens with underlying mental health issuesespecially girls who struggle with disordered eating and body-image issuesare at particular risk.


"For a young girl who's developing her identity, to be swept up into a sexual world like that is hugely destructive," said Paul Sunseri, a psychologist and director of the New Horizons Child and Family Institute in El Dorado Hills, Calif., where Jula began receiving treatment last year for anxiety and depression. "When teen girls are rewarded for their sexuality, they come to believe that their value is in how they look," he said.
He said approximately a quarter of the female patients at his clinic have produced sexualized content on TikTok.
Carter Barnhart, co-founder of Charlie Health, a virtual mental-health care provider, said a growing number of teens she treats report their self-esteem is dependent on the quantity of likes they get on TikTok. "Many of them have figured out that the formula for that is producing more sexual content," she said.

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I'll never let my children use these apps.

Good on you OP.

My brother told his kids "you'll get a cell phone the same day you get car keys. And if I ever catch you using both at the same time, you'll lose them both at the same time."

Weird...it's almost like slippery slopes actually exist, and aren't fallacies?

Year of the Germaphobe said:

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Weird...it's almost like slipper slopes actually exist, and aren't fallacies?

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The people that say they are fallacies this century are the same ones who have a hard time understanding what a woman and a man are, or tell you what are `conspiracy theories'.

The sexualization of our society has done far more damage than most want to admit.

Keep it up OP. My wife and I did the same. Our daughter (now 16.5) has felt as though we are just strange, but there has been enough time now for her wit see that others go through some of this. So she understands somewhat. They are very sneaky I have found and you just have to be quite watchful. I say thins and yet I know that each kid is different, ours just seems to be easily moved by the crowds unfortunately. So, she only gets the phone at home and only in the kitchen. Soon she'll be driving and we will be allowing it to go with her then for obvious reasons but not now. This works out better than one may think.

ETA: we also made our kids watch the Netflix documentary "Social Dilemma". I'd recommend this.

Have it blocked via app and router for my teen son. That and all social media. Completely destructive to mental health of teens.

I am one of the weird parents as well. My daughter does not have tik tok nor a phone. She doesn't need one. I don't care what other kids have. Her attention will be on things that matter.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

Year of the Germaphobe said:

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Weird...it's almost like slipper slopes actually exist, and aren't fallacies?

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It should be slippery slope ad nauseam. It's one thing to describe a plausible and probable sequence of events. It's another to describe a plausible but improbable and even ludicrous sequence of events.

AgBQ-00 said:

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The sexualization of our society has done far more damage than most want to admit.

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It's nothing new. High school dance teams have been sexualized for a while now, as an example. Social media just means a larger audience...

My kids get Gab phones in Jr. High. You can call and txt, that's it. Good alternative

This. Mine have no desire to use those apps and don't care if we track their phone. Simple.

wreckncrew said:

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I am one of the weird parents as well. My daughter does not have tik tok nor a phone. She doesn't need one. I don't care what other kids have. Her attention will be on things that matter.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

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That's awesome! Parenting is not easy and I don't subscribe to the "I'm your friend" concept. I tell my kids clearly, I can be your friend but I am your father first. Non-negotiable.

My son is 17.5 and he was the only kid who did not have a phone for a long time. He got it as he started HS as I needed to coordinate pickups. Even then, I just got him a flip phone. He had that for 1 year and then I gave him my old iPhone. He is more mentally more mature now to handle it.

My daughter is currently the only one in class without a phone at 13.5. I clearly told both my kids that they were NOT being punished, they were being protected. I think this is key. Kids must understand why they are being deprived of something. She has never asked me for a phone (she does ask me for a dog though). Her friends text her on my wife's phone so we are able to keep tabs on what they talk about.

I remember 5-6 years ago, I was in a room of guys who were parents of kids around 11-12, all gloating that their kids had the latest iPhone. When my turn came, I said "My kid is just 11, I don't think 11 year olds need a phone". I bet they all thought I was too poor to buy him one.

I'm a believer that just because we put a rule in doesn't mean they aren't still doing or seeing it. Sounds like a lot of great parents here who invest in their kids', having an open dialogue with them will Trump everything else.

The number of female students we have struggling with anxiety, gender identity, and depression has increased astronomically this year. I think being locked down created an environment where social media was, for many, the only way they were interacting with the outside world. It's been devastating and I think we are only scratching the surface. Keep them off that poison.

Muy said:

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I'm a believer that just because we put a rule in doesn't mean they aren't still doing or seeing it. Sounds like a lot of great parents here who invest in their kids', having an open dialogue with them will Trump everything else.

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There is no 100% in anything. The idea is smaller kids have immature minds and cannot decide things for themselves. As they grow older, they are metally equipped to decide. People in their 20s wasting time on social media is their own fault. If a kid does it, it is the parent's fault.

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My daughter is currently the only one in class without a phone at 13.5. I clearly told both my kids that they were NOT being punished, they were being protected. I think this is key. Kids must understand why they are being deprived of something. She has never asked me for a phone (she does ask me for a dog though). Her friends text her on my wife's phone so we are able to keep tabs on what they talk about.

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With her so well poised you should definitely grant that request. Dogs are wonderful if not a dangerous kind to kids.

Simple: March those girls to church. Quit being godless.

titan said:

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Quote:

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My daughter is currently the only one in class without a phone at 13.5. I clearly told both my kids that they were NOT being punished, they were being protected. I think this is key. Kids must understand why they are being deprived of something. She has never asked me for a phone (she does ask me for a dog though). Her friends text her on my wife's phone so we are able to keep tabs on what they talk about.

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With her so well poised you should definitely grant that request. Dogs are wonderful if not a dangerous kind to kids.

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I would have but the only thing is what do we do with the dog when we go out of town or overseas? A dog is like another child. But this is something we need to think about.

From the same WSJ link.

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At Newport Academy's outpatient treatment program in Atlanta, 60% of the girls treated since the program started last summer have posted sexually inappropriate videos on TikTok, said Crystal Burwell, the program's director of outpatient services.

One 16-year-old girl Dr. Burwell is treating made progressively more suggestive videos. "The more likes she had, the more revealing her outfits became," she said.

The girl ended up chatting with a man who urged her to take their conversation off TikTok and into a messaging app. The girl sent the man partially nude photos of herself and the two were making plans to meet in person when her parents discovered the texts, according to Dr. Burwell.

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Apps like these just train little girls that all that matters is their looks and they have no worth outside of that.

I know of one such family. The daughter is a freshman at USC. She posts a lot of suggestive TikTok videos in tight clothes and everyone seems to know about it except her own parents.

Quote:

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A few months after she joined the app in the summer of 2019, Jula Anderson's wish for TikTok fame came true. A video of her wearing a tightfitting tank top and lip-syncing the pop song "Sunday Best" blew up. For reasons Jula and her mother, Shauna Anderson, still don't understand, TikTok's algorithm pushed the video to viewers' For You pages. More than a million people viewed the video and nearly 500,000 people liked it, they both said.

Jula's following went from a few hundred to more than 200,000. There was nothing overtly sexual about the video, she and her mother said, but her video's comments were inundated with boys and men saying how hot she looked.

Buoyed by the success, Jula made her videos more risqu, including by lip-syncing lyrics about sex and getting more revealing in her wardrobe choices. "I'd wear clothes that I wouldn't wear to school but that I felt good in," she said. "I didn't view them as that sexual, but other people did."
By then, she was constantly checking her likes. "It was my whole world," she said.
Her parents weren't aware of how suggestive the videos had gotten until Jula's grandparents, tipped off by cousins, alerted them.

"To us, she's this sweet girl, so it's almost like this split personality between who she really is and how she portrayed herself on TikTok," Ms. Anderson said. "When we confronted her about it, she was like, 'Mom, that's what everyone is doing.'"

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We have this for our kids. Can only send/receive calls and texts from numbers we program. Also has GPS tracking. Necessities only in what looks like an original iPod case.
https://mykidsconnect.com/

At first the kids objected that this wasn't really a phone - I agreed, it's an emergency contact device, which is what they need.

Personally, I think much of this is just parents not being involved to the degree they should be. I feel like "not giving your teenage kids a phone" is a convenient and easy way to avoid teaching kids about responsibility. You're just shirking the responsibility and kicking the can down the road.

The phone is a communication tool. My perspective is clearly different having kids growing up on a farm. They have a phone, but they also have knife, and a rifle. They have been taught about all of it. From my experience, kids are far more capable than parents give them credit for. I have no idea how many parents in passing have said "oh my daugher doesn't do clothes" or "she's too young to change a tire". If I put on facebook what my kids are doing daily with cattle, horses, power tools, and firearms, these parents would die. I do have discussions with them like "This is a live drive PTO shaft. If your shirt gets caught in this, it's going to rip your arms off at the shoulder and you'll bleed to death before I can help. Be smart." Obviously we don't just let them do whatever, but hard conversations and gruesome explanation of consequences of 'not knowing better' is extremely important. The same goes for a phone. I have no trouble telling them they can have a phone but not have tikitok. I have no problem telling them this is how kids are abducted or tricked and killed. I don't even care.

We have provided our teen with a phone. We also keep tight control over it and are all over it. I have passcodes, I have faceid access, etc. They understand that it is not a toy. Much like treating a firearm like a toy, treating the phone like a toy and acting like a fool will also result in irreversible damage.

I have found if I treat them as adults, they tend to act more like adults. Keeping them busy with tasks and extra curricular stuff is also good. It's absolutely true what they say about idle hands.

Get in their business. Be in the phone. Take their doors off the hinge. Parenting is hard and it involves being hated sometimes and thats OK.

TRADUCTOR said:

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Simple: March those girls to church. Quit being godless.

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Church girls can be bad girls too...

The problem isn't the app. It's the society that promotes and rewards risque behavior.

Cutting kids off from phones and apps isn't helping them. You must be able to trust your children and have them listen you. Otherwise, you get rebellious children who find a way to do the forbidden especially when EVERY one of their friends can.

Compare it to prohibition, that's not the way to stop drinking or alcohol abuse

TAMUallen said:

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The problem isn't the app. It's the society that promotes and rewards risque behavior.

Cutting kids off from phones and apps isn't helping them. You must be able to trust your children and have them listen you. Otherwise, you get rebellious children who find a way to do the forbidden especially when EVERY one of their friends can.

Compare it to prohibition, that's not the way to stop drinking or alcohol abuse

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That's only partly true. There is something to be said for keeping something away for a formative period until the mind is just a bit more formed.

For example, if raising kids today, if it took selling an organ, they would not go to the public indoctrination route we see being imposed. If you can get them well enough raised to about junior high age -- there will be more chance they don't drift.

There are no guarantees, but for another example -- TV news would not be on continuously during their pre-kindergarten phase with all its bad message. It would be TV sparse.

Much like drug traffickers and cartels aren't the problem, it the insatiable appetite this society has for drugs.

How many of you would allow your 5-year-old kids to play with a chainsaw plugged in to live power?

Especially we are sure that it is not the chainsaw's fault, this should be perfectly okay.

Most of my "good" students don't have phones. And they are in high school. And they are perfectly well-adjusted.

The problem is a lack of parental involvement in children's lives.

Nope, nothing wrong at all with fueling dopamine addiction at an early age.

In this day and age, the girls who are overly developed, aka the ones who have larger than average boobs, hips, or butts are particularly vulnerable to this kind of scenario. Why? Because they are vulnerable and naive teenagers with bodies that put many adult women to shame. For social media apps like Tik Tok, this is a very dangerous combination because they are not equipped to navigate that kind of validation addiction cycle and the serious predators that it brings.

The amount of these kinds of accounts on Tik Tok is staggering and once these girls turn 18, they almost always create an Onlyfans.

Basically, if your daughter has this kind of body, then as a parent you have to be extremely cautious. Previously you only had to worry about real world issues from older men going after them but now it's online and constant if they are on social media.

Additionally, this kind of attention on social media always brings jealousy among their peers at school. They will almost certainly experience immense bullying at school if their account is found from others at school. It's likely these other girls we're already jealous of them because of how they looked but this ramps it up to other level.

It's not at all a surprise to see these girls developing severe emotional issues from this situation. I'd roughly equate it to the kind of damage drug addiction causes.

TAMUallen said:

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The problem isn't the app. It's the society that promotes and rewards risque behavior.

Cutting kids off from phones and apps isn't helping them. You must be able to trust your children and have them listen you. Otherwise, you get rebellious children who find a way to do the forbidden especially when EVERY one of their friends can.

Compare it to prohibition, that's not the way to stop drinking or alcohol abuse

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The problem is the app in this case. Social media apps are bad for teens, especially girls.

I was mocked and ridiculed on aggies only just a few years ago for very bluntly stating that parents where fools to give children cellphones and unrestricted internet access.

Gee... we see how that went.

Unfettered access to social media is the number one issue with childhood development, behavioral problems, and the overall disconnect of the under 21 crowd from reality right now.

You know Joe and Hunter are scrambling to set up "handles on these apps after reading this info.