In Screen writes tech reporter Rutger Otto weekly about the internet. This week, he is surprised by a meditation function on TikTok. And he shares your reactions to last week’s blog.
Sometimes I get press releases in my mailbox that make me blink. This week it was an email with the subject: TikTok launches meditation experience for all users.
I associate TikTok with an endless stream of short videos that try to hold your attention for as long as possible thanks to smart algorithms. Keep watching, keep swiping. The contrast with a stimulus-free meditation exercise could not be greater.
Maybe that is why the function is in the right place on TikTok. The platform itself naturally thinks it is a good move to help young people calm down in this way. TikTok says it wants to encourage teenagers to close the app on time in the evening, be more aware of screen time and relax.
Thanks to the new function, the video stream for users under the age of eighteen is interrupted every day after 10 p.m. by a meditation. A blue screen appears, relaxing music sounds and there is help to inhale, hold your breath for a moment and exhale again.
The function is enabled by default for everyone under the age of eighteen. If they click away from the meditation, they will (only) receive a message an hour later that is more difficult to ignore. A TikTok spokesperson explains to me that teenagers then have three options: continue using the app for another fifteen minutes, disable further notifications for the night, or adjust their settings.
You can turn off the meditation exercise completely. But TikTok emphasizes in its press release that by far most teenagers did not do that during a test period.
I call Mark Tigchelaar, an expert in the field of focus. Would it help, such a moment of calm in the lion’s den? “Only if the meditation is the last thing you see and you can’t use the app anymore,” he thinks. “Otherwise it’s like Marlboro saying after a cigarette: you can breathe for a moment now, then we’ll light the next one.”
Can meditation be a signal to stop TikTokking for the day? It seems like an ideal time to drop out. I have to think of the app One Sec, which always builds in a delay when you try to open social media on your phone. That is a moment of awareness in which you can ask yourself: do I really want this or am I opening an app out of automatism?
The difference is that One Sec builds in such a moment before opening an app. “With TikTok it comes while you’re scrolling,” says Tigchelaar. “If you can continue TikTokking after a breathing exercise, it’s total nonsense. A good marketing trick.”