At 16 years old, I blew up on TikTok. Now, at nearly 20 years old, I sometimes wish I hadn’t.Â
With some Gen Zers spending a quarter of their day consuming content online, it’s no wonder that being an influencer has become such a desirable career path. Nearly everyone I know posts on at least one online platform, if not several. It’s hard to escape the digital world, and for a lot of us, we’ve never known life without it.
TikTok first entered my life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many people, I was a bored and lonely teenager, and the app provided me with a much-needed outlet for human interaction. I started off as a consumer, but soon enough, I was tempted to post videos of my own.
In 2021, I started posting thrift hauls, outfits of the week, and other fashion-adjacent trends and was an overnight success. It’s easy to look back and cringe at my now out-of-date style and bleached blonde hair, but I must have been doing something right at the time.
Ever since then, I’ve been posting at least once per week and have amassed over 50,000 followers and 2.9 million likes. While there are certainly far more popular content creators out there, I never could’ve anticipated reaching so many people in my short time on Earth. So, what is being a content creator really like?
The Pros & Cons
On one hand, there have been plenty of positive experiences to come from this happy accident:
- I made tons of online friends and connected with others who have similar interests.
- I got to work with brands and receive free products.
- I improved my video creation and editing skills.
- I gained a lot of confidence (despite that confidence coming from external validation).
- I received academic and career opportunities I might not have otherwise had.
On the other hand, being this active on social media hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows:
- I received more hate comments the more my account grew.
- I got constant notifications and spent too much time checking views, likes, and comments.
- I wasted hours upon hours doom-scrolling on TikTok but refused to delete the app because my success would “go to waste.”
- I struggled with self-perception and differentiating between TikTok and reality.
- I felt pressured to always be “on” and rarely felt present in the moment.
Living With TikTok
So, where do I go from here? With America’s TikTok ban being extended yet again, it’s worth thinking about how to form healthy boundaries with the app if it’s really here to stay.
These are some habits I’m trying to implement to take back control of my love-hate relationship with TikTok:
- Turn off your TikTok notifications. Whether you are a content creator or not, the peace of mind this will bring you is unbeatable.Â
- Stop doom-scrolling (yes, I’m talking to you). TikTok makes a fortune from you spending hours staring into the void of your “For You” page. Don’t let an app keep you from living your life.
- Set aside “no social media” time. I’m trying to live by a mantra one of my favourite YouTubers, Darling Desi, shared: “Sun goes down, phone goes down.”
- Find hobbies that make you feel alive. It’s easy to spend all day on TikTok if you have nothing better to do. Find your “something better.” For me, it’s knitting!
- Reflect on what you want to do with your life. Regardless of what your dreams are, I bet they don’t include wasting a quarter of your life on an app. Consider the possibility that, without change, that could be your future.
I can’t change how my life has played out so far, and neither can you. Maybe I should never have downloaded TikTok. Maybe it was the best thing I ever did. I guess we’ll never know. Regardless, I truly believe that a life worth living exists outside of our screens.Â