Disturbing TikTok Videos – We Need Media Education for Our Children

Would you just let your toddler in a room with rapists or delinquents? To a room where drugs are consumed and glorified?

The above comparison comes from a YouTube video by opinion blogger Alicia Joe. The space in which we leave our children today, regardless of their age, is the Internet, social media. Most of these are actually only from the age of 13. Nevertheless, in everyday life, we often see toddlers who often already scroll on TikTok on their own smartphone or that of their parents. According to many parents, the reason for this is to calm the child on the train or in the restaurant. First of all, this is a fact that is very easy to understand. However, one should think about the implementation of this and, above all, be aware of the consequences.

In one case at the Albert-Schweizer-Gymnasium in Leonberg, the students sent each other unconstitutional pictures and Nazi symbols in a WhatsApp group. To give you a better idea of this, here is an example: In the group circulated among other things a picture of a machine gun with the subtitle: "solves up to 1800 asylum applications per minute". Of course, almost every child looked at all chat content in order not to be excluded. At first, the children do not worry about the possibility of videos glorifying violence or nude photos hiding behind it. But that's the reality! Violence among children, pornography, cyberbullying or even videos showing instructions on how to take your own life: all this is reality! Especially on TikTok, but also on other social media platforms. This may have a negative impact on the overall development. Whether it is that many children and young people carry out the violent content themselves in real life, or many get afraid of sexual activities. Unfortunately, the platforms are not held responsible enough and often display such dangerous content on a targeted basis. Children and young people are often encouraged to implement the content and challenges themselves.

In the case of Luise from Freudenberg at the beginning of the year, in which a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old girl brutally stabbed 12-year-old Luise, videos of the girls were circulating on TikTok channels hours after the crime. Although no videos of the crime itself were published, the protection of the perpetrator could not be guaranteed due to the dissemination, which can have very serious consequences,

especially for child offenders. The videos received an enormous amount of attention, with speculations in the comment columns and hatred directed against the still underage perpetrators.

More than one in four children under the age of 15 has already consumed extreme scenes, such as real rapes, real murders or real scenes of war. Many parents are justifiably overwhelmed, do not know how to deal with the new media. Another problem is the emergence of the so-called Bystander effect – i.e. a distancing effect. Children and young people who see such scenes can no longer properly classify them. Like gaffers in an accident on the freeway, everyone watches and nothing happens. This often leads to a loss o

f empathy, especially in children and adolescents.

It is true that young children in particular should stay away from such disturbing content until they go to school and should not be unprotected on TikTok or other social media platforms. However, a ban cannot and will not be the general solution. Because as we all know: bans provoke. It makes sense, for example, to establish an age limit in the law and to set up an ID card control in the app. This would mean that at least no children under the age of 13 would be able to create their own account, or at least it would be more difficult to do so. A children's version of the app can help to provide children and young people under this age with a protected environment on social media. Some social media platforms are already implementing this in practice. For example, YouTube has a kids version and Instagram has a parental control function, where parents can specifically track what their children are consuming in order to possibly intervene. It is

therefore essential to work on media education in schools, but also by parents.