Are You A Bad Person For Using TikTok? How To Handle The 'Ick' For Apps You Don't Want To Quit.
Since TikTok thanked Donald Trump for its return to the United States, being on the social media app can feel like endorsing the Trump administration’s racist, chaotic policies.
When lifestyle creator Meghan Wainwright saw the TikTok pop-up message thanking Trump, she said it felt like a “punch to the gut.” “It felt like some PR stunt,” she said. Wainwright soon after made a post denouncing the “sinister vibes” she felt being on TikTok.
It’s not just TikTok. Lately, it can seem like every social media service is morally or politically compromised in their own way.
Staying on X means supporting Trump advisor Elon Musk, who owns the platform, and his far-right ideologies. Scrolling on Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook means benefiting its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who believes in “masculine energy,” and is revising speech policies to allow more criticism of immigrants and transgender people.
The stakes are higher for creators where staying engaged on social media is not just a way to keep up with friends and stay informed ― it’s their income.
“We’re in such a bind, because this is our job, yet with everything that’s come out recently ― the increased censorship on TikTok, what’s going on with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg just revealing insane things about himself ― it makes wanting to create content for these platforms so hard,” said fashion and styling content creator Shuang Bright.
But this internal conflict is also exactly why creators might be the best people to talk about their calculus for being on social media without losing one’s mind.
For LGBTQ+ travel creator Kristin Holden, social media is her primary income and how she earned around $40,000 last year, but it’s also a major source of “ick.” Holden’s first thought on seeing the TikTok pop-up thanking Trump was “gross.”
“It is just this double-edged sword of this constant internal battle of like, ‘I also need to exist in this world, and I can’t without these resources,’” Holden said about using apps owned by tech billionaires with politics that do not align with her own.
Not all of us are social media creators, but many of us are in a similar predicament. Is it possible to balance being on social media without losing your soul right now?
“There is still this power behind being able to connect directly with people, even if you’re not necessarily talking straight to them, you’re hearing straight from them,” Holden said about why she still is on TikTok. “And I think that’s really powerful.”
Here’s how to manage that power wisely:
Follow and engage with the creators you trust.
It is completely valid to log off and live your one precious life off of social media hellscapes. But the online community you have found and built can be worth keeping ― especially in this isolating time when you need community more than ever.
The “TikTok made me gay” phenomenon is real, for one. Wainwright credited TikTok videos with helping her discover her bisexuality and with healing from past relationships.
After her breakup, Wainwright started posting on TikTok about it, and her journey created “discussion forums in the comment sections, and people are sharing words of wisdom and advice and motivation,” she recalled. “That really helped me get through a hard time.”
To maintain bonds with your new online friends and creators you like, you can also do, as Holden does, and follow them across multiple platforms and engage with their content by liking and commenting: “That way I make sure that they stay in my algorithm, and my algorithm stays safe,” Holden said.
Curate your recommendation feed.
You can also curate your feed using the free tools that social media apps offer. Holden said this way, people can limit their engagement to only the people they wish to support.
On Instagram, you can add up to 50 people to a favorites list, so you can simply choose to look at what people on your “favorites” list have posted and then log off, she said.
Bright also recommends the TikTok strategy of only using your “Following” page over the “For You” page if you only want to see content you have personally vetted.
Be prepared to use ‘algospeak.’
If you, like many others, believe your algorithm feels off right now during the second Trump administration, you might want to engage in “algospeak,” as some creators do. It’s where posters use code words to avoid having their content removed or down-ranked by content moderation systems’ opaque rules.
Take what’s happening on TikTok right now as an example. How exactly TikTok’s algorithm works is unclear, but leaked documents have suggested that the app favors “lucrative content” that can be monetized. Whether or not it is true, many people believe that the TikTok recommendation engine favors e-commerce content, and as a result, people are using coded phrases like “cute winter boots” to discuss U.S. political protests and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that are happening in their towns.
Of course, not being able to speak your mind is taxing. Holden said it is “incredibly disheartening to consistently feel like we have to hide but also be visible” as a queer person, but she also uses queer algospeak like “qu33r” in posts as a strategy against her explicitly queer content and political dissent being “shadow-banned,” or censored online.
“Even just mentioning Trump...I have referred to him as ‘47’ because if I say Trump, I’m afraid it will get shadow-banned, especially because it wasn’t speaking highly of him,” Holden said.
Know that you can be selective about when you use algospeak. Bright said she plans to use more algospeak in the future, but for now, she will still use “lesbian” over the “le-dollar-bean” code word on TikTok because the code word “removes the gravity and seriousness of certain topics.”
“If there’s a need to [use algospeak], I absolutely will, but until then, I don’t want to mask my language,” Bright said.
And log off.
Yes, even though creators make money by being on social media, they still make time to be offline, too.
“The tricky thing is that my job is also connected to being aware of what’s happening so I can create content on it,” Holden said. “So there’s kind of that duality of being engaged enough, but also protecting my peace.”
One way to know when enough is enough is to be mindful of your moods when scrolling online.
“If I’m scrolling, and the algorithm is taking me in a direction that’s making me feel very anxious and it’s not making me feel relaxed or inspired or laughing, I think that’s the cue,” Wainwright said. “‘OK, I need to put my phone down and go do something else at this point.’”
For Wainwright, “something else” means leaving her phone in another room while she goes to work out or cleans her home. She acknowledged that it helps that for her, social media is a part-time job, and the revenue she gets from it is a “bonus” to her tech sales profession.
Holden, meanwhile, goes to “touch grass” and be outside when she needs a break from social media, because nature is healing for her. She also makes time for phone-free activities like reading. “Reading fantasy is my escape from the world completely, and that’s how I reset my mind...and not doomsday scroll forever.”
The right balance between staying on social media and protecting your life outside of it is different for everyone, but it’s one worth finding out for yourself.
“Obviously, these [social media] companies are all owned by horrible people,” Bright said. “But as long as I feel like there’s community, and I’m still finding information and solace and other people going through the same thing, I do feel like those elements are still worth it.”
