The dangers of TikTok and the networks that became babysitters

Trends currently revolve in great quantity due to what happens or not in social networks, attention has become almost total. For the economy or politics, if you do not exist on social networks, sales or popularity will take its toll. This transferred to the social sphere is beginning to be noticed more and more, especially in childhood and adolescence, who now know dangers in a game of likes or followers.

“The girl was recording a TikTok and they had a weapon, an UZI submachine gun that her dad owned. It was recorded and shot," the prosecutor Sara Bruna Quiñónez Estrada announced at a press conference this Friday.

That case is that of a 15-year-old adolescent in Guasave. In the official part it was indicated that she was inside her chamber, turned on the platform, started a video, took the weapon and while transmitting and generating more followers, reactions and comments, she decided to pull the trigger. Died.

Claudia Rodríguez, a therapist psychologist, sees this case as an example of one of the forms of development of thousands of children and adolescents in the midst of the absence of fathers and mothers.

“Simple challenges become another type of challenge where injuries occur and other risks such as this time with the teenager from Guasave, where there was an extremely serious incident.”

The general spokesperson for TikTok Mexico assured the EXPANSIÓN site that on the social network it works with safety organizations for adolescents, including the National Center for Disappeared Children and the PAS Foundation to develop policies that promote the safety of young people, who are the main users, to try to eliminate dangerous challenges.

“We ban and remove all dangerous content and/or challenges from our platform. Although we have not found evidence of a blackout challenge on the platform, we continue in our commitment to the safety of our users, ”the site specialized in business and technology documented in October 2021.

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But the problem of challenges in TikTok is not everything, it also happens in other networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more where dynamics of virtual participation are established, some with dances, others with the use of filters and some more that invite you to put your life at risk.

Children and adolescents join these dynamics and challenges for various reasons, among them, and one of the main ones, is depression and lack of self-esteem.

“It may be due to a resistance to pain that they have typical of adolescence, they are very sensitive at that age. It can also be the acceptance of their friends and obviously to be popular and we include all this to a lack of self-esteem”, assured the therapist.

The biggest problem, said psychologist Rodríguez, is that the networks have become a refuge that has sheltered minors in the absence of fathers and mothers. They became runaway virtual babysitters.

“We have nannies who are called cell phones or iPads who are taking care of our children, they are taking care of our children, we have them with an apparent calm, we are thinking that they are fine, but our children are dying in our locked rooms,” he said .

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The State System for the Protection of Girls, Boys and Adolescents (SIPINNA) recognizes that the use of the internet and social networks have marked a challenge for the care of minors, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

This, he said, marks one of the priority actions for the government, since it forces it to identify the consequences of interaction with devices and social networks.

For example, the importance and strength of being able to teach school classes is known, but also that they have been a bridge to share personal information, photographs and videos often with sexual content with unknown people.

This information can then be passed on to other adult content platforms willing to pay large amounts of money, it is an increasingly large market with information on children and adolescents.

“Messages with parents must be worked on to open communication about the existing risks on the internet and implement an awareness campaign,” said González Elizalde.

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The case of the adolescent in Guasave is one among others that has been documented by the Attorney General's Office in the last three years. There are others where the networks have been used to attract children and adolescents to other places with a model of forced recruitment or human trafficking.

The challenges of TikTok and other networks are constantly changing, one day it might be taking a bath with a bucket of ice water and the next picking up a gun to point to your head and pulling the trigger.