6-year-old girl plays a strange TikTok clip, psychiatrist warns of ‘addiction’ to the virtual world

Children enamored of watching TikTok become “addicted”

Vietnam has the highest number of TikTok users in Southeast Asia. At the end of March 2020, there were 13 million Vietnamese people using this social network. The main age of users is from 13-24 years old, which is easily seen as the age of students. However, in fact, many children under the age of 13 have “circled” the age limit to join this social network.

Behind the attractiveness and fun that TikTok brings, it also contains extremely dangerous downsides with a series of videos related to sensitive issues such as drugs, sex, animal abuse .. . with no less false messages.

Trends “storming” appear more and more on TikTok. However, not all trends are entertaining and positive, but there are also “toxic” trends.

Many viewers have been bewildered by videos showing off their bodies with erotic descriptions on TikTok. The most worrying thing is that the person who posted the video is still very young, many female students are just in middle school and high school.

Many parents worry for their children to develop a deviant personality when watching “toxic” videos, but have difficulty controlling their children’s participation in social networks.

Older sister Thu Hang (Ba Dinh district, Hanoi) shared, for many months now, she has always had a headache because her daughter has just entered grade 1. Due to the epidemic, she cannot go to school in person but has to study online at home. Parents are busy at work, the older brother is busy with school, the little girl has nothing to play, so at home she often watches TV, his phone or iPad.

Knowing that it is not good for her children to be exposed to technology for a long time, but Hang also has to accept it because “there is no way to fix it”. Hang’s daughter has a personality, doesn’t like to study like her brother, so she doesn’t ask for it, forcing her child into the framework right away.

More than 3 months ago, Hang fell on her back while going to work, when her eldest son sent her mother a picture of her sister while studying, she went online to search for instructions on “trading school, skipping school”. That night, when she asked, she said the reason was because the day before yesterday, she had watched a video of an online truancy instructor on TikTok but couldn’t remember it all.

Hang’s 6-year-old daughter searches for “how to skip school online”.

Talking to Infonet reporters, Dr. Dr. Tran Thi Hong Thu, Deputy Director of Mai Huong Day Psychiatric Hospital said that “addiction” to TikTok will leave dangerous and harmful consequences for children in general, especially young children. The most dangerous thing is that children who have not yet differentiated between right and wrong have imitated false clips. Although the clips on TikTok are short in duration, most of them are entertainment, but sometimes there are clips abroad that also record illegal acts or perform games that are harmful to the health of followers.

“Just like playing violent games that cause violence in reality, children addicted to violent games see bloodshed and killing as nothing, no emotions. This is shown that the daily life of children will be very dangerous.

TikTok has good content, but with bad, objectionable, and educational content, it is impossible to stop it in time if children are involved. Addiction and imitation are also difficult habits to break, many people who like to watch also follow TikTok but don’t like anything else.

Children who love those clips will become bad habits, taking up time to learn other things while children need to develop many important life skills, “said Dr. Hong Thu.

Parents intervene as soon as possible

According to Dr. Hong Thu, currently the “addiction” to TikTok has not been attributed to a pathology, but there have also been patients who were brought to the clinic by their family members due to abusing electronic devices and being too addicted to TikTok. Most of these cases just stop at being examined and consulted by a doctor and then go home, not going to the hospital for treatment.

“There are acquaintances of mine who have brought their children to consult, just like addicted to playing games, children are also attracted to the virtual world but lose other skills. Children are also greatly affected by their perception and appearance,” said Dr. Hong Thu.

According to Dr. Hong Thu’s share, there was once a parent who took their child in grade 1 to seek advice from a doctor. This parent complained that her daughter was always watching TikTok on the phone her parents gave her for online learning. After that, she also started making videos, asking her parents to take pictures for her.

The girl imitated famous clips on TikTok with cute lines in the song “Miracle Friendship” with the same accompanying movements. At first, the parents saw that the child’s imitation was very similar, and they were “admired”, let the child be happy, but the child became more and more abusive.

Gradually, I started not needing my parents to help me record the clip, but I did it myself. The phone for me to use to study online every day is now full of my TikTok clips. More ominously, not only imitating the famous “trends” on TikTok, the baby comes up with his own moves to dance, do very weird tricks, say meaningless sentences… to “produce” the clip. The school is lazy, it turns out that the child grabs the phone to film TikTok.

More and more children are approaching and “circling the law” to join TikTok even though this social network limits the user’s age to over 13 years old.

According to Dr. Hong Thu, in the case of children “addicted” to TikTok, parents must accompany their children more closely. This means that parents have to take more time to pull their children out, rather than leave them with smart electronic devices and do whatever they want.

“Initially, parents can limit it by treating it as a reward: children have to practice writing, practice drawing, and complete assignments well, then parents will reward them for being allowed to play TikTok for a specific period of time. Parents suddenly ban with nothing to replace, nothing to enjoy, children are very depressed.

In the long run, there must be a way to end it completely. Because when parents still consider it as a regular reward, children are still excited, still thinking about it. But if you want your child to completely forget, there must be other replacements.

This basically has to be stopped like a game addiction. Because the psychology of being addicted to something, after being banned from playing again, there is often a desire to play more. Just like that, the trend is gradually increasing, it is easy to relapse again.

Only when there is another passion to replace completely and sustainably, parents can be idle. Therefore, when seeing children “addicted” to TikTok, parents should intervene as soon as possible, “said Dr. Hong Thu.

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N. Huyen