The Psychological and Social Consequences of TikTok Addiction Among Youth in Karachi

Abstract

Youth nowadays had been using TikTok frequently and had becoming a psychological and social victim of it. TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms had adverse social and cognitive effects but still the youth don’t refrain to use the application. This study focused to find out the social and cognitive factors of using TikTok on the youth of Karachi. To study the hypothesis, three independent variables for social factors and three independent variables for cognitive factors had been examined. The population of this study had been 250 respondents which were examined via online survey through close ended questionnaire. Reliability of the variables had been checked through cronchbach’s alpha and linear regression had been applied to find out the cause and effect of independent and dependent variables. The finding of the study concluded that youth of Karachi has been addicted to make and view the short video clips on TikTok and this frequent usage and addiction had been positively affecting the users socially as well as psychologically.  Moreover, it had been concluded that social acceptance cravers or depressed individuals are mostly the users of the application. TikTok had also been developing a sense of inferiority complex upon receiving sarcastic comments from the viewers. Users don’t refrain to expose themselves to danger just to get fame, while people also agreed that some users make unethical content for this purpose. Furthermore, some respondents agreed that some people had been using TikTok as a source of promotion and they do market their products as the application has been providing them easy access to target massive audience towards the business and also it provides an access to diverse cultures. Every individual should be aware of the negative consequences that TikTok has been causing and in order to create awareness among the society such sessions should be conducted in which individuals should be informed of the adverse effects and they should be provided counseling so that they should spare their leisure time in some healthy activities instead of adopting a society followed trend. The sessions and counseling could be delivered via seminars, workshops, conferences where target individuals could be reached out easily.