Viral dangers of TikTok

The rapid raising of TikTok

While giants like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter remain relevant in an ever-evolving digital age — a new contender has entered the arena to a great welcome, especially among young people — TikTok.

But all this week, TikTok has blocked thousands of accounts.

The reason?

For trying to share a video that shows a man committing suicide. This material, however, was first transmitted thru Facebook Live, and it was deleted by Facebook on the same day.

Suicide is a very delicate matter, psychologists and psychiatrists are not 100% secure about the influence that seeing such videos has on the brain of teenagers.

But we are talking about a rising problem:

• Every day, approximately 105 Americans die due to suicide
• Overall suicide rates increased 28% from 2000 to 2015
• One person dies by suicide every 12.3 minutes in the United States
• There is one completed suicide for every 25 attempted suicide attempts
• In the elderly, there is one suicide for every 4 attempted suicide attempts
• Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States across all ages

Gender Differences

• Males are four times more likely than females to commit suicide
• Females are more likely to have thoughts of suicide
• Females are four times more likely than men to attempt suicide
• Males are most likely to use firearms to commit suicide
• Females are most likely to use the poisoning to commit suicide

Age Differences

• 1 in 100,000 children ages 10 to 14 die by suicide each year
• 7 in 100,000 adolescents ages 15 to 19 die by suicide each year
• 12.7 in 100,000 young adults ages 20 to 24 die by suicide each year

TikTok is extremely popular among children, teens, and even young adults. Often, in this range of ages, the most pressing problem is sexual identity, precisely one of the leading causes cited by experts as a risk factor for suicide.

Videos showing open gay affect demonstrations are between the most viewed and shared in this platform, and there is a tendency to show the “coming out of the closet” to parents using a TikTok video.

This is an especially sensible range of age when teenagers' personalities are more affected by such suicide videos.

The solution, until now, is the same that in other social platforms: to delete unwanted videos and to block users who try to share them.

We need to think better. We need to explore better solutions, such as applied artificial intelligence to discern such videos and avoid their virality since they are first posted.