Yesterday, on multiple occasions, I noticed young people filming videos for TikTok, and I'm pretty sure I ended up in the background of a few.

Today, for the very first time, I decided to install the app and search for the location's hashtag. I found way more videos than I expected, though I didn't spot myself.

As I kept scrolling, driven by whatever logic fuels their algorithm, the content started to shift. In no time at all, I was flooded with videos of young girls, not all of them adults, in explicit poses and highly revealing clothes. They were performing (what they clearly thought were) sensual dances, all following the exact same trend and the same background music. Then came the boys, doing something similar but different, flexing and showing off their bodies as if they were standing in front of a mirror.

I kept scrolling without pausing, as none of this holds even the slightest interest for me.

Eventually, I stumbled upon what I assume was some kind of "challenge": young girls simulating sexual acts to entertain their male friends, all synced to the beat of the music. It was quite explicit, even if they weren't actually showing skin. The captions said something along the lines of "Can we still stay best friends?" or something similar.

For a brief moment, I felt like decades of "we are more than just bodies" and hard-fought battles for women's respect had just gone up in smoke - all reduced to cheap sexual innuendos in exchange for a few likes.

Maybe I'm just getting old. But I uninstalled the app without a second thought.

#TikTok #SocialNetworks #Trends