Friday, March 29 2024

“On the website Musical.ly, sexual videos are hidden in
the background, others even focusing on self-harm or, even more seriously,
with explicit references to suicide.” This is the powerful criticism by a
mom, published as a post on

Medium,

a very popular web magazine in the United States. The mother, before
surrendering to the application for registration of her 10-year-old
daughter, decided to browse a bit on the platform, discovering that on
Musical.ly there is an incredible amount of videos labeled with hashtags of
an improper nature, such as #proana (anorexia), #cutting, #mutilation and
#selfhate.

What is Musical.ly

Created in 2014, Musical.ly is the social media site teens
love the most. Within a few years its popularity shot up beyond 200 million
members, most of them being teenagers who enjoy sharing videos where they
sing some famous songs in playback, through a video-sharing app available
for iOS and Android.

It’s not so much what the site does that should be a red flag to parents,
but rather its content because inside you can also find videos not suitable
for minors.

The dangerous content of Musical.ly

Musical.ly
has announced the arrival of the new function to help removing the most
dangerous hashtags. A sort of help window, as Instagram did as a result of
numerous complaints.

According to many parents, the app would only feed the excessive obsession
with popularity, also allowing the even younger ones to run into dubious
content: “Many think it’s just an application to have fun – remarks the
mother of an eight year old girl who ended up caught in the vortex of a
ruthless competition between girlfriends – but like all other social
networks it has taken on a negative connotation.”

With a simple search, in fact, you can find thousands of results for each
of these hashtags.

Following the complaint, Musical.ly quickly blocked the
search for these improper keywords, explaining how “the process by which
the searchable terms are eliminated is constantly evolving.”

But the problem remains, the hashtags are themselves evolving too, and it
is not so easy to immediately identify them and then block them.

Even just a small change in the hashtag is enough to continue to spread
dangerous content. Moreover, some hashtags are used for good causes, since
some people use the same hashtag to reach a wider audience to warn it. For
example, hashtags such as #proana (anorexia) or #mutilation are used to
alert and inform the public on sensitive issues for helping those who have
eating disorders or who want to understand the problem of female
mutilations. By blocking that specific hashtag and not checking for
inappropriate content, you risk preventing the spread of positive messages.

Will it be enough, as announced by Musical.ly, the pop up
that warns of the danger of certain content and behaviors?

The importance of educating within the family

The impossibility, at the moment, to check and block all the content
generated by users, raises a big question about the security of content and
the ability of users, mostly teenagers, who are exposed to violent messages
or can be triggered by them.

This is why it is essential that parents exercise prudent surveillance on
the apps their children use, whether it be Musical.ly or
other social media.

Social media is giving more and more importance and relevance to videos, to
live streaming, to exhibitionism and showing off, and, consequently, social
narcissism is growing. As the development psychologist John Santrock has
well defined: “The peer group conditioning is a ubiquitous force, which can
be observed in every dimension of adolescent behavior, such as the decision
of how to dress, what music to listen, what language to adopt, what values
to adhere to, how to manage free time.” If the social and virtual network
amplifies these behaviors, what effects can it have on adolescents?

In order to support the creative and relational skills of adolescents , adults should maintain a proper distance: be there
without hastily expressing critical devaluing judgments. Between
adolescents and adults there can be a positive mutual relationship, and
Internet can bring generations togetherAdult culture, being able to
maintain a good relationship with young people, becomes more open to
changes and innovations; youth culture, if supported by adults, can develop
in a creative direction while maintaining a stronger bond with reality.

The attentive and collaborative presence of adults who are able to support
adolescents allows them to modify their own projects in a creative sense
and to develop their personal identity in a harmonious way.


Self-centeredness and competition: when social networks make you weak

Musical.ly
has received many criticisms also for the essence itself that drives it.
Many parents consider it a dangerous app because it feeds feelings of
competition and showing off difficult to manage by youth.

Although competitiveness is seen as positive in our society, from

a recent study

by York St. John University, published in the Psychological Bulletin, an alarming fact emerges:

young people are becoming ever more perfectionists and their mental
health is at risk.

In fact, adolescents are no longer able to recognize and experience failure
as something that is part of life, which therefore has to be tackled and
managed. It seems that we are growing a generation of insecure people, not used to competition, but used to winning and when

things do not go as planned, panic attacks, anxiety, even suicide
attempts come up.

“Today’s youth are competing with one another to satisfy societal pressures
of being successful, and they feel that perfectionism is necessary to feel
secure, socially connected, and valuable,” explained Thomas Curran, lead
author of the study.

From the data collected, it would seem that social media also influences general dissatisfaction. No
one likes to share his own anxiety or fears, but mostly to show the best
part of one’s life, increasing the dissatisfaction of those who live in
isolation or cannot afford a life full of fun. This comparison renders
people more isolated, inasmuch that they are literally ‘alone’ in
experiencing confrontation with others.

School, work, family and even social media, invite competition, but the
boomerang effect can be worse than expected and bring people down instead
of improving and trying to win the competition itself.

The psychologists’ warning and the research of the York St. John University
have the great merit of

having highlighted the crisis of the model of technocratic society

that we let prevail: An idea of man and society that pushes young people to
extreme perfection, together with many other factors, is driving people
towards depression or even the desire to commit suicide. At the bottom,

there is a mechanistic and utilitarian idea of man and humanity,
without soul, spirit and heart:

a humanity that, if reduced to this, it could be better replaced by the
robot society foreshadowed by the supporters of transhumanism.

Certainly, this is a warning. If we want our society to not take on the
contours of absurdity, it is necessary to change and help, especially the
youngest, to live better by supporting them in the delicate phase of
development and growth of adolescence. We must stand by and support the
children of today to ensure that they can grow up calmly in order to become
stable and mature adults.

Previous

The 7 Super Errors of the web

Next

Cell Phones in School: Yes or No? Coming up, 10 rules that will generate debate and discussion

Check Also