The Tik Tok Time Limit

There’s no doubt Tik Tok is the reigning app in the social media world, at least with Gen Z users. Those same consumers of copious amounts of social media are my high school students.

Here’s the thing about teaching - the kids haven’t changed all that much. There are still super kind kids who work really hard. The kids who do drugs, but now it’s in vape form, which can’t be bad for you apparently because it tastes like cotton candy. There are the kids who are the class clowns, and the kids who struggle. They are all still there.

The two things that I would argue are different are phones and parenting. Those two things together are proving to be lethal to teens.

Tik Tok is rolling out a new feature which is set to restrict scrolling time for anyone under the age of 18. Problem number one, they can lie about their birthday (like I said, kids are kids, and fake IDs are nothing new).

Creators of the app have said that after one hour of use a notification will be sent to the user to input a passcode to continue scrolling. The expectation here is that teen users will have the willpower to see the notification on the screen, and say to themselves “yes, I have had enough today, maybe I can go outside.”

In an act of genuine concern, children under the age of 13, will be required to have an adult put in the passcode for them for additional scrolling time.

Side note:

Why does your child under the age of 13 have Tik Tok? We know that Tik Tok, among other social media apps, is not good for us. We know that it is altering our own fully developed brains as adults, so what possible benefit could there be for allowing children 12 and under to have it. It’s actually quite dangerous for the purposes of catfishing, grooming and trafficking. Many governments around the world are already banning it from work phones, Canada and the USA among them. If you aren’t perking your ears up at that, I don’t know what you are waiting for.

The reality is most kids will simply enter the passcode and carry on.

Well, Tik Tok thought of this, and is strengthening the parental controls where parents can now have more power over restrictions and exposure through filtering out certain hashtags or search words and setting their own time limits.

Herein lies the problem. As an educator, I don’t have a ton of faith that many parents will impose those restrictions on their teens. Why do I think that? Let me share with you some parent-teacher interviews.

Interview Sample One:

Me: “She struggles with cell phone use in class.”

Parent: “Uh, I know, I just don’t know what to do about her phone!”

Me: “Who pays for it?”

Parent: “Well, we do.”

Me: “Then I feel like it can be restricted.”

Parent: “No, we couldn’t. She would never let us.”

Me: *Internally combusting*

Sample Interview Two:

Me: “She struggles with cell phone use in class.”

Parent: “I just feel like she’s not being challenged enough.”

Me: “Well she’s struggling academically because she doesn’t pay attention to get the content.”

Parent: “Well are you making it relatable to her as an individual?”

Me: “This course is an elective, which means your child chose to study this content.”

Parent: “Well I feel like she will get off her phone when you make it relevant to her.”

Me: *Internally combusting*

Sample Interview Three:

Me: “She struggles with cell phone use in class.”

Parent: “Well you better not take it from her.”

Me: “Students are asked the first time to put it away. If it becomes a chronic issue, it will go on my desk and be returned to them at the end of the period.”

Parent: “That is my child’s personal property, and under no circumstance are you allowed to touch it.”

Me: “You do know that your child is borderline failing this class because nothing gets done due to her constant cell phone use”

Parent: “If you touch my child’s phone, I will go to the principal.”

Me: *Internally combusting*

Forgive me for not having a ton of faith in some parents.

I am not my students’ friend. I am their educator. It is not a relationship of equals, in fact it would be cruel to mislead them to believe that, and irresponsible on my part. Some parents seem to struggle in understanding they have the same responsibility.

Things like limiting Tik Tok will likely receive push back from the child. It will suck. There will likely be tantrums and slammed doors. That is the crux of being a parent, it’s doing the hard work when they are young so they have a model of how to do it for themselves later.

The reality is, limiting social media apps was always the responsibility of the parent. Not the creators, and certainly not the child who likely does not yet have the maturity to do it for themselves. If the argument was that the tools to set those boundaries weren’t there (physically taking the phone was always on the table by the way), the creators have now fulfilled their end of the bargain.

Let’s see if parents can fulfil theirs.