Chances are that if you're reading this, social media was introduced in your lifetime. Whether or not that means you have vivid memories of retrieving the AOL CD ROM from the mailbox and begging your parents to set it up on your Gateway PC (which came in a cowprint box) is another thing.

If all of that resonated with you, email me at Jeana@asweatlife.com to commiserate about the series finale of Full House or your lower back pain.

A considerable amount of time has passed since connection to the internet came after you endured a minute of dialing-up. And in that time, we've seen wifi prevalence,

MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. This week, we cover TikTok, which came onto the scene in China (or a version of it, anyway) in 2016. And in the U.S., TikTok was largely popularized as families, COVID pods, and pre-teens danced and danced and danced again during the pandemic.

And TikTok has been called addictive, which can be in part to its extremely intelligent Algorithm. It gains a quick understanding of who you are, what you care about, or who you’re attracted to. 

So, if you’re watching videos on a topic like weight loss, it could start to serve you dangerous content that pushes you towards disordered eating. On the flip side, if you’re looking for motivation to move your body and feel stronger, it could start to serve you exactly what you need. Or you could get nudged into a 75 Hard.

That's why we loved aSweatLife writer David Robertson's coverage of fitness challenges and trends on TikTok and how to tell if they're safe. On this week's episode, we talk about his guidance as well as our own personal feelings about the social media we're consuming.

Resources:

• By David Robertson How to determine if a TikTok trend is safe
• David Robertson on Instagram
• By Sarah Beerman Mental health TikTok on aSweatLife
• NYTimes The Egyption revolution that began on Facebook
• Wikipedia dedicated to Twitter revolutions
• The history of TikTok according to Wikipedia
• NBC News: TikTok surpassed google
• NYTimes: How TikTok’s algorithm works
• What’s a 75 Hard?
• By Chanel Kenner How to do a weekly social media detox
• She said, the movie