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During my routine doomscroll-and-rot-on-my-couch ritual after class, I find myself instinctively clicking on the chat bubble icon to access the comments on TikTok. Before I’ve even decided what I think, I turn to the thousands of anonymous users for their expert opinions and astute observations on a video of Clavicular walking into an Erewhon for the first time. I’m met with “He’s unironically the funniest person on the internet sometimes,” “I feel maternal towards him idc,” and “He’s grocerymaxxing.” Consequently, I find myself thinking, “yeah, maybe Clav is pretty funny.” However, is that what I really think, or what I’m being told to believe? I’m met with this dilemma in almost every video that comes across my feed, whether it’s TikTok, Instagram Reels or even YouTube Shorts.
The same thing happens when I try to buy anything. Before I order a new mascara, I’ve watched six TikToks, read four Reddit threads and skimmed a Marie Claire listicle ranking the “8 Best Mascaras for Falsies-Level Length and Volume,” every source contradicting the last. By the time I actually decide, I’ve wasted forty minutes, and I end up choosing whichever reviewer got paid the most money or whichever video had the most likes. How often am I really thinking for myself when I go on social media every day? When constantly exposed to the opinions of others, how much of what I say can I really claim as mine? Who am I if not the mosaic of every viral trend and corny saying I’ve ever seen?
People have always been shaped by what other people think. But there is a difference between a thoughtful conversation with a friend and a comment section that hands you a fully formed take before you’ve had thirty seconds to react. While I can at least applaud myself for recognizing this habit, children with social media access may not have that same self-awareness. Children are already looking to the world around them to figure out what is funny, cool, embarrassing or worth caring about. Social media gives them an endless stream of answers: The most liked comment is the funniest joke; the most viral fit check is the coolest outfit; the most stitched video is the cringiest moment. None of these are sinister on their own, but together they leave increasingly little room for a child to decide, without consulting an audience, “I like this,” “I don’t like this,” or even “I don’t know yet.”
Childhood is when we’re supposed to learn how to sit with questions long enough to actually answer them. And, with the advent of AI, it’s easier than ever to get a second opinion without ever forming one yourself. Why wrestle with a difficult question if ChatGPT can give you the perfect answer? For children still developing their sense of self, that convenience comes at a cost. If every question can be answered and every opinion supplied, we risk raising a generation that knows how to find an answer but not how to arrive at one on their own.