Normalized Bullying on Media Platforms: TikTok

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As TikTok becomes more and more popular, habits like bullying are becoming normalized and are even considered funny. 

Many videos go viral just from the comments sections where comments get thousands of likes, often bullying the video creator. North Hollywood students on TikTok have shared their opinions on the normalization of bullying on the social media app. 

Somara Oliva, an SAS senior who uses TikTok daily, mentions that she has noticed people bullying others on TikTok but “doesn’t think much of it.”

She mentions, “I saw this TikTok where a girl shared her outfit and people commented things like ‘now who told her she should post this’ with around 20k likes on the comment.”

It has become more common for people to say mean comments on TikTok but this ist as common on other social networks like Instagram. 

Sadie Tejada, a NHA sophomore, mentions, “It’s not TikTok without the comment section. You rarely see any instagram posts that have comments more famous than the post.”

After asking why she thinks that is she says, “I think it’s the formatting of the app and how people give different functions for each social media app.”

An anonymous North Hollywood student thinks it’s because of the generation of TikTok users, “Gen Z dominates TikTok and we don’t realize how harmful it is to be embarrassed on a viral level through social media.”

She speaks on her bullying experience as well, “I posted a video doing the ‘why I can’t be humbled’ trend,” a trend where you mention good qualities about you, “and so many people commented ‘who gon tell her’ and it really hurt to read those comments.”

A famous TikTok creator shares his relationship with his girlfriend where they have a large age gap. Oftentimes their videos go viral for the amount of hate and bullying they receive for age and looks. 

Recently the creators posted a video saying that the hate comments are becoming excessive and the jokes are getting “old” and asks their audience to “mature and accept their happiness.” 

Unfortunately, the normalization of bullying has caused many creators on TikTok to face this issue and sometimes feel it necessary to deactivate their comment sections or even their accounts.