[user104658]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

However, she must've already been in a dark place in the first place, to have even initially been searching for this type of content in the first place.

That's not how modern social media algorithms work - you don't have to search for anything at all. It starts by serving everyone an entirely random selection of videos and then there are very sophisticated ways of guiding and tailoring content. Linger a few seconds longer than usual on a video? The algorithm will remember and "test" a few similar videos. Linger on them a few seconds as well? It now knows that this is content that captures your attention, even if it's just for a few seconds. So you get more and more of it. The more you see, the more you get, and the more extreme it becomes.

I had to completely scrap and restart my original TikTok because I got trapped in MRA/Redpill/Incel TikTok. I did not WANT to see them, but it started with watching a video of some awful arsehole because he was so awful - also made the errors of sharing a video with my wife (to say "look at this idiot") and also commenting to (of course) troll some basement-dwellers... but the damn app doesn't know (or care) why you've watched, shared and commented on a video - it just knows that you did, and that it wants you to do it more. Literally within a week my whole TikTok was video after video of bloody Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and GB News. The only way to get back to funny viral videos and cat memes was to delete the whole account and start over.

The same will apply to depression/anxiety/nihilistic content. Watch one video, you'll get ten more. It's a very quick and very slippery slope, especially for a young teenager who doesn't understand that they are being served up a tailored genre of videos and it's not that the whole world is changing.

I've made sure that my daughter is acutely aware of algorithms and how online content is driven. Kids in general are thankfully becoming more savvy about it in general - you'll always hear about them "tailoring their For You page" etc - which is, basically, actively manipulating the algorithm so that it only shows the stuff you actually like seeing.