Will the proposed govt ban on Tik Tok platform help ease societal tensions being caused by debates on the cyber space?

Earlier, the cyber space was dominated by users who were equipped with writing skills through blogs. Later facebook and twitter platforms engaged all types of people, even introverts to come out of their personal cocoons and open up their lives to strangers.

Tik tok platform enabled users to make short-videos of imitations or formulate their own content for a large scale of online audience. This is highly entertaining and addictive to today’s youth.

Drawing concern on the making and sharing explicit, culturally degrading, racist videos through this app, the lawmakers have expressed concern.

Thamimun Ansari,a Member of Legislative Assembly , from Nagapattinam stated “I raised an issue forwarded to me by community welfare workers that the mobile application (TikTok) was acting as a platform for heated debates inimical to law and order, and sharing of sexually-explicit material.”

Information Technology Minister of the State of Tamilnadu, said “the government will recommend that the Tik Tok app be banned in Tamilnadu”

In the light of this statement, The Covai Post spoke to users of Tik Tok belonging to various age on the issue of proposed ban on the platform.

T. Harshavarthini , a 20 year old college student from Coimbatore, said she loved watching the videos from the app. She confessed that she was camera shy of making the videos herself but her peers are doing it regularly. “I am willing to attempt them one day soon” she stated confidently. “There is censorship setting in the app for the users, one is allowed to enable this and choose the content they want to view” she replied when asked about the inappropriate content shared.

B. Murthi, 53 year old,parent of two teenage daughters objected to the concept of tik tok itself. “Why should everyone be so obsessed about tik tokvideos? Don’t they have better jobs to do? Is this intellectual? Even if 20 percent of the videos are informative and humorous, the others are inappropriate irrelevant and absolute killer of time” he rued.

Rajammal, 75-year-old, an avid tik tok user told us that she ardently enjoys watching videos from Tik Tok.

She claimed to have made videos singing old Tamil movie songs, which has been shared widely. “At this age, I am enjoying myself with the attention I get from people of all ages” she said.
Dr. Vijayakumar, a psychologist practising in Delhi, told us that this app marginally stimulates obsessive compulsive disorder in everyone, even if it lies dormant in a person.

He stated, “As with any social media, there is a rush. Someone viewed it. Someone liked it. OMG someone shared it. You get a sudden rush of happiness with each one. And the more you do it, the more they come in. The more they come in, the more you have a tangible measurement of your worth.

But the thing is that social media numbers are not actually your worth. If your neighbor/peer/classmate gets 100 more views than you, does that make them a better person?That’s a big problem in modern life. We constantly compare ourselves to others because the measurement is visible.”