‘For You’: Is the TikTok Algorithm Problematic?

TikTok began as 2 different apps in 2014; Musical.ly and Douyin, to then be launched as TikTok in 2018 by the tech conglomerate ByteDance. TikTok has since gained a billion users, feeding consumers viral content and is known for being a Gen Z domain.

TikTok has a unique structure, featuring a discover page where users can search specific hashtags and other users as well as being a reel of the most popular trending hashtags. The app features the For You page – the star of TikTok’s algorithm show. The page is an endless circus of videos that are ‘for you’ chosen by TikTok’s algorithm related to the user’s profile, location, and similar videos to those they have already engaged with.

I use TikTok often, but particularly on quieter days. When monitoring the content that my For You page exhibited, the patterns were as follows.

#MumsofTikTok

I opened TikTok on my phone to a video from a profile named @enchantedmummy. The video showed ‘digestive relief for colicky babies’ paired with the hashtags #babyhack and #mumsofTikTok. A mother is shown cradling her newborn and talking to the camera all things baby.

It can be frustrating that the female-related content is associated with childbearing, and I find that this adds to societal pressures on women to have children or that young women should be aspiring to have children one day.

The discouraging aspect of this is that if a 24 year-old woman like myself is seeing this content when not following any pages linked to childbearing, this content is likely to be popping up on younger girls‘ feeds, adding to the plethora of pressures they encounter.

#FitnessInspo

After scrolling through multiple videos, I came across a video with the hashtags #fitnessinspo, #skinny, and #skinny girls with ‘that’s the goal’ as the caption. The video featured a range of photographs of slim, tanned, white women in their underwear or gym clothes.

Again, I questioned how helpful the algorithm can be when a video that is promoting young women and girls to lose weight is appearing on my For You page. Problematic messages sent via videos of women is what allows and encourages the reputation of social media such as TikTok and Instagram to be toxic for women – these algorithms seem to align with the patriarchal gaze as well as unattainable, unrealistic, and unhealthy beauty standards.

‘Have you seen the state of her body?’

Additionally, the next video on my For You page was a young girl performing a dance trend to the viral TikTok song Body by Tion Wayne and Russ Millions. This song features a lyric implying that if a man sleeps with an attractive woman, wearing a form of protection in is discouraged.

This song has featured on my TikTok an excessive amount. The song has become famous due to the popularity on TikTok – with aid of the algorithm. A song that has misogynistic lyrics becoming a hit is nothing new, however the algorithm that feeds it onto user’s For You pages is adding flames to a fire that did not need aggravating. This song and its accompanying dance trend owe their success to the TikTok algorithm.

The algorithm floods feeds with videos that become popular and are successful on the platform. When this content is not intentionally searched for, it cannot be guaranteed that this is content that is suited to the user. On balance, instead of videos being chosen related to a user’s interests, videos feel intrusive and unrelated, appearing due to view and like ratings.