When should kids be allowed to use social media? The perceived correct age can cause heated arguments between kids and their parents, as well as among adults. There is such a big world out there that kids want to see, but that’s the whole problem: The world is so big that parents have little control over what their children will be exposed to when they use social media. For many parents, it is just one of those things that’s a hard no.
Asia Grace, a woman in her 30s, recently performed a social experiment. As she explained in the New York Post, she posed as a 14-year-old boy, Jayden, on TikTok to see what would happen. To be clear, Grace was not soliciting followers or posting content to engage adults. She simply wanted to know the type of content the algorithm would suggest for Jayden based on his age. What she discovered was pretty scary.
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Girls, girls, girls.
Early in her investigation, the first few videos she saw as Jayden were of girls. Can you guess what kind? No, they weren’t reading passages from Romeo and Juliet or giving math tutoring for those in need.
Instead, Grace found “a dizzying stream of videos of girls lip-syncing and twerking in mini-shorts.” The TikTok algorithm apparently thinks teenage boys equate to an interest in sex and sexy things.
But it got worse.
Grace explained that things quickly “took a darker turn.” She was soon exposed to big-time influencers such as Logan Paul, a stuntman turned boxer. Paul, 27, has more than 17 million followers on TikTok alone. He has a huge reach, and as the title influencer says, he has the power to change how people think. And we know young minds are easily manipulated.
Paul contributes to a YouTube series with the Sidemen, a British group known for offensive and misogynistic content. Grace explained that in a series titled “Sidemen Tinder in Real Life,” they speak fairly graphically with women invited into the studio for a possible love connection.
They don’t usually find Mrs. Right. Instead, the men insult the physical appearance of the women, which is simply disgusting.
The TikToks just got worse for Jayden.
One video showed a young kid, probably around Jayden’s age, swinging his fist toward a girl in slow motion while she pulled her head back. She was likely terrified she was going to get hurt, Grace explained.
Another video, “Calling my girlfriend the ‘B’ word for her reaction,” showed a boy continually calling his girlfriend the unkind name, hoping she would laugh.
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Is this how we are conditioning our young boys to act?
It’s pretty scary to think that these are the things TikTok wants to show a 14-year-old boy. The videos take aim at girls with physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. None of this is ever OK.
But according to Grace, it doesn’t stop there. “I also heard hate-speak about killing orphans, hanging Black people, and mocking Asian accents disguised as ‘dark humor’ to tickle 14-year-old funny bones as I swiped."
Influencers like Andrew Tate, who has since been banned from TikTok and other social media sites for his heinous content, are pushing an infuriating misogynistic agenda to young boys. Despite being removed from the app, the internet is forever, and Grace was soon facing clips of Tate on Jayden’s For You Page, or FYP.
And it’s not just TikTok.
Grace also checked out YouTube, an insanely popular site for kids starting extremely young. Here she found less content targeted toward degrading women and hate speech but more videos with guns and violence.
Tate popped up again with what Grace believed to be a real gun and called himself “Trigger Dawg.” That was enough for Grace, and after five days as Jayden, she logged off and deleted the accounts.
"While the platforms do promote some largely harmless and legitimately entertaining content — from Mr. Beast’s stunts to thrilling sports highlights — much of it is seriously sinister,” she warned.
It is certainly enough to make a parent pause before allowing their kids to scroll aimlessly for hours.
