Who’s Training You?
A recent investigation of TikTok conducted by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the popular social media platform uses powerful algorithms to study its users’ behavior so that it can personalize content to make it more engaging. The WSJ created several accounts using bots (software that imitates human behavior online) to learn how TikTok’s algorithms work. The results of the investigation showed that the popular video app needs only one piece of information to uncover your hidden interests and emotions—the amount of time you linger over a video.
When users set up an account on TikTok, the site draws them in using popular, mainstream videos. As the algorithms study their behavior, it learns their vulnerabilities and pushes more and more niche videos with fewer views into their feeds. Researchers found that in less than two hours, their bots were sent down “rabbit holes” of potentially harmful, extreme content, based not necessarily on what users liked but on what they have lingered over the longest.
For example, some of the bots were programmed to show interest in videos about mental health and depression. In just minutes, the majority of the videos in these feeds addressed topics like anxiety, depression, suicide, and mental illness. Many of them were harmless. Some of them were informative. But some of them came from the deep recesses of TikTok’s archives, where the more extreme videos lurk, away from the watchful eyes of those who enforce the platform’s community standards.
You can imagine how the algorithms might engage users with other vulnerabilities, such as eating disorders and sexual addictions.
Data scientist and algorithm engineer, Guillaume Chaslot, summed up the problem, saying, “We are training them, and they’re training us.” That ought to get our attention. Whether you’re on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform, you are interacting with algorithms that are responding to your activities in ways designed to hook you. Why? It’s simple. The longer they can keep you on their app, the more money they make.
Our young people are on the brink of the greatest mental health crisis in history because they’re being trained by online companies, who are interested in them only as products, and not by the Spirit of God who loves them.
What’s the solution? Set boundaries that will limit when, where, and how you will use social media. Know the risks. Control the technology before it controls you.
Paul described his work as “taking every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). He armed himself with the word of God to fight every argument and philosophy raised against the knowledge of God. Do you know who has control of your mind? Who’s training you? Do not entrust your heart to worldly social media platforms. Let God be your guide. He will care for your soul.
Drew Kizer