The purpose of this work is to give a fairly accurate idea of the impact of the TikTok social media platform on the attention of students during lectures. The effect of TikTok as a platform, the use of which takes more than 50% of the young audience a significant amount of time of the day, on the ability to perceive information, seems to be quite strong (Cervi 2021: 198). The peculiarity of TikTok as a platform that uses algorithms and integrates with the user with a sufficiently long time of use has a certain impact on the user’s mental health. A significant proportion of Generation Z, i.e. young people between the ages of 14 and 24, uses TikTok at least for 30 minutes a day (Stahl and Literat 2022).
Thus, the key years for obtaining education and the necessary skills are at risk of being wasted due to a shift in the focus of attention, a decrease in the duration of attention maintenance and, as a result, learning and academic performance. As part of this work, it is proposed to study the real impact of this social media platform on the mental state of students, with an emphasis on the skills to perceive academic and educational information.
It is assumed that the format itself, in which videos are organized on this platform, is sharply inconsistent with the principles of presenting information in a lecture format. Conducting a lecture or a seminar as a manifestation of oratory and academic professional skills has a completely different specific impact on human consciousness. The perception of the lecture format requires a certain amount of attention and the ability to concentrate on the topic under discussion. The problem that using TikTok underestimates the attention span is extremely significant when it comes to the perception of the lecture format.
The student loses the opportunity to focus on the material, since the principles of information consumption in the TikTok format are completely different. Despite the fact that TikTok is a distributor of news and useful information, the platform itself primarily positions itself as a hosting and algorithmizer of entertainment content. This content is extremely diverse, eclectic, but short in length (Qin, Bahiyah and Musetti 2022).
TikTok is also distinguished by another important property inherent in other social media. The material on TikTok is presented in the Feed format, thus being a potentially endless stream of changing audiovisual information. It is not difficult to imagine how this format is radically different from the traditional format for the presentation and perception of educational and academic material. It can be extremely difficult for students to rebuild their minds to a less clip and chaotic format, which cannot but affect their learning skills negatively.
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The purpose of using TikTok by a student, in case the students themselves are not content creators, is primarily to distract from everyday problems and routine. It is in this aspect that TikTok, like any social media platform, turns out to be dangerously addictive for a significant risk group among young people. The ease of use and flexibility with respect to each user provided by the algorithms creates a certain ecosphere in which the student can feel more comfortable than in everyday life (Kaya 2022). The addictive potential of social media should be fully appreciated, since this type of media addiction is clearly capable of underestimating both academic performance and motivation to learn. Reality may begin to seem hostile to a young person and itself cause rejection and a desire to fence off.
TikTok, like many other social media, is an artifact of the culture of influencers, where the influence and popularity of people within a single medium is highly valued. This can have a depressing effect on the psyche of a teenager, being multiplied by an inferiority complex (Agater 2022: 6). A teenager ceases to receive an adequate assessment of oneself, constantly being in a reflective process of comparing himself with others who, in their opinion, are more successful and influential people.
One response to such a blow to self-esteem may be isolation, increased introversion, and decreased social contacts in real life. This may not have a positive effect on learning and academic performance, as a lack of motivation and fear of social contact prevent any normal learning. It is ironic that it is the interaction with the platform, the original purpose of which was to provide worldwide communication through video, that underestimates the student’s real
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