When did TikTok become the only app that exists to 14yo girls?

Dec 61 min read

My daughter is 14 and literally everything revolves around TikTok now. She's following weird trends, comparing herself to girls with 500k followers, and I caught her trying to hide her screen time. We had a massive fight about it last week. I'm considering pulling the plug completely but I know that'll just make her resent me more. Other parents of teen girls—how are you handling this? What's reasonable at this age?

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Comments(10)

OOwen F.RegularDec 7

Honestly this is why we just don't allow TikTok in our house. I know that makes me sound like a boomer but I watched my niece spiral on that app. She's 14 too and the algorithm is literally designed to keep kids scrolling. My daughter uses Instagram with time limits instead and it's night and day different

CChris F.RegularDec 7

lol the 500k followers thing is brutal. i asked my 14yo why she cares what some random girl posted and she looked at me like i had three heads. tried explaining parasocial relationships and she just went back to her phone

TTom E.RegularDec 7

Honestly the fact that she's hiding screen time means the rules you have in place right now aren't working. Not blaming you—this is legitimately hard—but sneaking it is different than just using it a lot. Might need to have a real conversation about WHY she feels she needs to hide it rather than just enforcing limits harder.

CCliff B.RegularDec 8

When my daughter started doing the comparison thing I literally showed her a TikTok about how heavily edited/filtered those 500k accounts are. She thought I was trying to trick her at first lmao. But then she started noticing it herself and was like "oh weird, why does everyone look the same." Not a fix-all but helped her brain clock that it's not real.

RRob K.RegularDec 7

The screen time hiding is the red flag that gets me. That's when you know the algorithm has her in a chokehold. Have you tried actually following some of her interests instead of just limiting? Like if she's into a certain creator, watch one video together? Sounds corny but it helped my 15yo feel less like I was just the fun police.

DDominic E.RegularDec 8

The screen time hiding is the real tell that something's off. My 13yo did the same thing - turned brightness all the way down when I walked by. We had to actually sit down and ask her what she was seeing that made her feel like she had to hide it. Turns out she was comparing her body to these filtered influencers and felt embarrassed about it.

GGrant C.RegularDec 8

The weird trends are actually the least of it imo. The comparison stuff is what kept me up at night. My daughter was convinced she was ugly because she didn't look like FYP girls. We literally had to delete the app for 2 weeks and she actually seemed... calmer?

MMarvin T.RegularDec 8

lol the 500k follower comparison is BRUTAL at that age. Their brains aren't even done developing and they're measuring themselves against literal content creators with ring lights and editing teams. Have you talked to her about how those accounts work or is that territory you haven't entered yet?

BByron S.RegularDec 7

This is exactly where my oldest is rn. One thing that helped: I stopped framing it as "TikTok bad" and started asking her actual questions about what she's watching and why. Turns out some of it was genuinely creative stuff, some was trash. Once she felt like I wasn't just judging, she opened up more.

CCharlie A.New DadDec 9

We set up a family agreement where my daughter gets TikTok access but we follow each other and she knows I'm actually watching. Not to spy on her - we talk about what she's liking. Took a while but it made a difference. She's less into the weird trends now that she knows I'm gonna ask about them lol