Why the TikTok Algorithm Keeps You Trapped in the Decay Loop

ByTech Word News

Days after breaking up with her boyfriend, Jasmine Barnett noticed a sudden shift in her TikTok channel: The comedy sketches and fitness clips she usually enjoyed were suddenly replaced by a constant stream of breakup videos.

At first, Ms. Barnett, a 27-year-old accountant from Atlanta, welcomed a detour into grief that included deep dives into attachment styles and dissecting relationships. After a few weeks, she wanted to move on, but the algorithm wouldn’t let her.

Her feed degenerated into montages of crying women and tarot card readers selling glimpses into her ex’s psyche. She made several attempts to block out the breakup content, she said, but it kept resurfacing.

“I’m like, ‘Please, I don’t want to see this anymore because it’s making me stay in that depressed state,'” she said, recalling her plight two years ago. “I didn’t want to be sad anymore.

It’s common for people in a vulnerable state after a breakup to find their social networks flooded with such content.

One TikToker says you can go “no contact” with your ex. packed postbecause, as he says, the person you miss is lame. Another cry while a motivational voice-over message plays. Others sell guaranteed multi-step plans to get your ex back.

As social media companies face increasing scrutiny for addictive design elements and accusations that their algorithms can feed users harmful content, mental health advocates point to the platforms’ handling of breakup content as a clear example of their failure to protect users.

Directing people who have left a relationship to an endless well of breakup content, which could increase engagement by trapping them in a state of rumination and grief, can have serious consequences for their mental health and raises a number of vexing ethical questions, experts say.

“When people go through a romantic breakup, there’s a way that being immersed in the content and thinking about the person they lost for a long time can make it harder for them to recover,” said Jodi Halpern, a professor of bioethics at the University of California, Berkeley, who is writing a book on grief.

TikTok’s algorithm is amazingly good at figuring out the preferences of its users and offers a customized stream of videos to engage them.

On BreakupTok, a corner of the platform dedicated to grief, videos feature personal breakup stories, advice on how to “get in touch” with exes, post-relationship cheers, and a variety of advice, including advice from licensed breakup therapists and coaches.

Dr. Michael Rich, founder of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, said TikTok appears to have a remarkable ability to respond to emotional states, especially during times of heightened vulnerability due to the “new loneliness.” He said it’s an example of an important metric for social media companies — longer engagement times — working against a user’s mental health.

TikTok can’t actually read human emotions (although it sometimes looks like it can). The app tracks user behavior—including video watch time, scrolling speed, and whether anyone likes, shares, or comments—and collects the data to determine what videos the algorithm should show next.

Bringing a stream of breakup-related content to people who have recently broken up with a partner could cause them to interact with the app too often or for too long, disrupting their natural healing, said Dr. Rich. It can prolong the heartache, hinder their ability to process their grief, and prevent them from moving on quickly.

“It’s like picking off a scab over and over again,” he said. “It takes you back and says, ‘Let’s relive it,’ under the guise of helping you.”

Research has shown that using social media after a breakup can be harmful. Random contact with an ex or searching for information about that person can lead to anxiety and more negative feelings slowing emotional recovery and inhibition of personal growth. Other studies found that even when users took steps to remove exes from their online lives, social media often rediscovered them — sometimes several times a day.

With breakups, experts often point to the endless nature of some social media feeds, features including notifications and “likes” that could encourage overuse, and now the rise of chatbots that reach out to grieving users as particularly problematic and dangerous.

“In addition to breakups, these manipulative tactics that get people to overuse social media and chatbots have been associated with reduced mental health and, in youth, with actual suicidal acts and serious mental health outcomes,” said Dr. Halpern.

TikTok declined to comment. Company acknowledged in the past that some videos may “unintentionally reinforce a negative personal experience for some viewers, such as when someone who has recently ended a relationship comes across a breakup video.”

To address this, the company said in 2021 that it designed its “For You” page to “break repetitive patterns” and that it was experimenting with ways to avoid recommending similar content “that may be fine as a single video, but problematic when watched in clusters.” The application also provides wellness functionsuch as tools to limit screen time and opportunities to help people relax and unwind.

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, said in a statement that it offers ways for people to manage featured content, including tools that limit certain types of posts or videos or block those that use specific words — like “breakup” or “relationship” — in hashtags or captions. In December, the company he announced the new tool, which she says gives Instagram users more control over their algorithms, allows people to see and edit topics the company thinks users are most interested in.

YouTube declined to comment, but it did last year updated its features designed to protect teen usersincluding initiatives to break repetitive viewing habits and highlight break alerts.

But experts and some users say many of these features haven’t actually kept heavy streams of breakup content out of people’s feeds and don’t go far enough to protect their mental health.

Not everyone has a bad experience with breakup content on social media. Some users said in interviews that they liked it because it helped normalize their experiences or offered useful advice, such as how to regulate their nervous system or meditate.

“I felt seen,” said Ana Ruiz, 35, of Orlando, Fla., who ended a relationship this spring. She said much of the content she consumed on Instagram helped her understand the flaws in her relationship and cope with the loss.

Others were more critical.

Jason Salem, who is in his early 20s, said the break-up content he watched mainly on Instagram and YouTube was “absolutely addicting”.

He said he would spend hours a day on social media watching attachment theory videos or content from creators he called “grifters” promising ways to fix his relationship.

“I wanted hope,” he said.

He said the content slowed his recovery and distracted him from focusing on what mattered to him, such as work, friends and hobbies.

“It kind of extended my grief because of how it’s designed,” he said. “They just want you to keep watching their videos.”

Overall, he added, the content hurt his view of dating.

“In hindsight, I realized that I saw a lot of posts that were ignorant or biased, but presented as fact,” he said. “They often presented a pessimistic and narrow-minded view of dating, and at my lowest points I identified with them.”

When someone experiences deep grief, the amygdala — the part of the brain that initiates the fight-or-flight response — takes over, and it can be difficult to access other parts of the brain that bring more perspective, said Jeff Guenther, a licensed therapist. who posts on TikTok about breakups and relationships to nearly three million followers.

“In those moments, you’re going to look for videos — or comfort — that will keep you feeling like something is really, really wrong,” he said. He added that continuing to feel these emotions is a way for people to stay connected to their exes.

Mr. Guenther said there was a lot of helpful breakup content on TikTok, including content from professional breakup coaches or users posting about their personal experiences. But there was also a lot of “incredibly engaging” content that he found unhelpful, blaming it all on the ex.

“So you never get the opportunity to grow and develop and look at your role,” he said.

Much of the content targets users in the negotiation stage of grief, when they may have hope that their relationship will be mended or that their ex will return, he said. It’s a difficult phase to navigate, even for a therapist, and one where one is particularly susceptible to exploitative content.

Mr. Guenther tries to subtly nudge people “out of the negotiation phase,” he said, but he said that’s not what the algorithm is for, with influential people relying on “false hope.”

“My feeling is that the less qualified you are, the better your break-up content tends to be,” he said. “Better as in, you know, you get more engagement.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.