The term ‘moral panic’ has become a phenomenon since Stanley Cohen conducted a range of research experiments initially starting in the 1960’s. A moral panic refers to society over exaggerating their reactions to events or actions taken place by an individual or group. These panics rely on disproportionality in the thoughts of society, not so much the actions being committed, no matter how absurd it may be, if people do not overreact then there will be no moral panic (Marsh, I. and Melville, G., 2011). The research conducted by Stanley Cohen has been developed both by himself and other practitioners such as Goode and Ben Yehudas and it has been found that these social panics can be outlined in greater detail and fall into five categories being street crime, drug and alcohol consumption, immigration, child abuse and media technologies.
The use of mass media and social media is constant amongst our society today in all age ranges. Social media has lent its hand in increasing the reactions of moral panics as it is able to widen the reach and heighten reactions of society. Critiques of moral panics and the media’s role in panics is that today moral panics are occurring when the media takes mediocre events or actions and moulds them into something surprising that shocks society. Another critique of the media is that the use of mass media has set in an action of escalation which promotes deviance to gain attention and be noticed by society, in other words it is almost glorifying being deviant.
However, the question at hand is that do people have a problem with Tik Tok specifically or do they have a problem with the constant development of social media taking up a greater role in society and older generations are struggling to catch up.
The moral panic surrounding Tik Tok is like many of other social media platforms such as, bullying, addiction, lack of development in social skills, child pornography and abuse. When the world went into lockdown in 2020 due to Covid-19 Tik Tok blew up as people were feeling lonely and isolated and mental health was of great concern. Moral panics surrounding teenagers partaking in harmful trends on Tik Tok which see them holding their breath, dyeing hair, jumping off buildings are more of a concern. Many people turned to social media especially Tik Tok to connect to a third party and as a result made connections with a wider audience. The ability that people now have to connect with others allows them to find a sense of self-worth and feel accepted which in return can also have the potential to fight against mental health conditions. Coincidently with the rise in use of Tik Tok going up 180 percent in isolation also saw a rise in mental health issues in society.
Scarlett Box 