Have you ever been doom scrolling during a bout of anxiety and come across videos urging you to make a massive change in your life, claiming to be your “sign” that your job is holding your back, your friends are actually unhealthy, and your partner might be cheating on you? These are the moments when “self-help” creators don’t seem to help at all.
In the past couple of years, there has been a new algorithmic trend to go online, state some (usually random) credentials and provide life advice. These creators claim to be experienced in some form of therapy, life coaching, possess astrology expertise or simply have the life experience to affirm their advice. Although sometimes a nice piece of advice will scroll across your timeline at the right moment, it is all too common for this type of content to plant seeds of anxiety in your mind.
On the therapy side of this content, videos range from normalizing obviously poor relationships — one of which even gives advice on how you should solve your partner choosing literally everything over your relationship (as if that doesn’t indicate a larger issue!) — or urging you to abandon your current friendships and find happiness in leaving everything.
The first theme is downright unhelpful; all videos spewing “relationship advice” — whether they relate to romantic relationships or friendships — should always be taken with a grain of salt. Once again, many creators seem to be coming from a good place, but not all of them are credible sources, nor may their advice apply specifically to your situation. Life advice creators precisely do not know the intricacies of your life, so their word cannot be taken as gospel.
The latter genre of content poses a tricky conflict, as encouragement to start anew can be helpful for some, but these videos require complete generalization to be successful and relatable to many.
It is well known that social media algorithms push anxiety-inducing content to keep users scrolling longer, and life advice videos aren’t an exception.
Videos amplifying anxiety-inducing advice are likely favoured by social media algorithms because they are general enough to catch the attention of almost anyone with close personal relationships — let alone the people who struggle with anxious thoughts in any capacity.
The overwhelming theme in life advice content is to urge people to restart — to leave their relationship, make new friends, get a new job or move to a new city. Though it is appealing to run away from everything to avoid conflict by refusing to face the sources of your upset and instead reinvent yourself into a brand-new clean slate, this is not the answer. This shouldn’t be the first piece of advice we yell out to the masses.
Many users have poked fun at life advice content, making parody videos to point out the ridiculousness of the genre. These parodies often mirror the therapy language used in the videos, with one user spoofing the genre to jokingly argue that your friends’ success is a “personal attack” on you and you should distance yourself from them without communicating your feelings.
Evident from the parody videos, TikTok life advice tends to hold a doom and gloom perspective on the world: one in which everyone is out to get you, nobody can be trusted and you must shed every aspect of your life for the sake of constant growth.
As a TikTok user points out, social media profits on your anxiety and misery. The more you engage with a certain content creator, the more the algorithm will send their videos through other users’ feeds; the more users they get engagement from, their potential for profit increases; the longer you scroll, the more advertising you consume. At every level of your time online, social media companies are racking in cheques.
There is a profit motive at every corner, and all come at the expense of your peace.
You may even notice an increase of life advice pop up in your TikTok feed when you’re going through an especially bad time. Former Google engineer Guillame Chaslot attributes this phenomenon to TikTok’s incredibly sophisticated algorithm, which is engineered to “learn your vulnerabilities much faster,” analyzing the patterns between the types of videos you pause on or rewatch. A Wall Street Journal experiment found that when a TikTok user pauses more on content revolving sadness, relationships or emotional pain, they’ll have this content continually targeted to them as the algorithm has noticed that it will keep them on the app.
Going forward, if you ever get anxiety-inducing content on your TikTok feed urging you to make a big change that you really don’t resonate with, remember that this is the work of your hyper-aware algorithm trying to profit off your mood. Instead of taking TikTok life advice to heart, look inward to find what you truly want. After all, you are the one experiencing your life, and it’s time to trust yourself, not your algorithm.