With the support of the rapid development of communication technology, social media has gradually replaced traditional communication methods such as mail and telephone into the mainstream of people’s communication. Due to its strong interaction and extremely low threshold of use, people’s behavior patterns have been significantly changed. Compared with adults, teenagers are more susceptible to the impact of new changes. A new generation of teenagers has grown up almost with social media, and their exposure to innovative media from an early age has made them digital natives. With the progress of the economy, the popularity of smart devices, and the development of social media, more and more teenagers are beginning to indulge in the happiness brought by social media. Video platforms such as TikTok have particularly attracted the attention of teenagers, with colorful videos attracting more and more teenagers to use them. Various kinds of content on the platform have a variety of realistic influences on teenagers, from thoughts to behaviors. Some people believe that TikTok promotes teenagers to increase their knowledge and broaden their horizons. Give it access to more global content. However, others believe that even though many people say that the emergence of social media has brought teenagers a new type of entertainment, it is difficult to distinguish whether the influence of information is good or bad, and negative information is leading teenagers to do destructive behaviors and harm to the society. In recent years, the connection between social media and the real world has become closer and closer, and many scholars believe that social media is having a significant impact on society, especially the change in teenagers’ behavior patterns. In this article, we will explore TikTok’s impact on young people, analyses its reshaping of teenage consumption attitudes, and determine whether it is responsible for a significant increase in juvenile crime.

Since TikTok was developed and released by China in 2016, through the acquisition and integration with many overseas video platforms, TikTok has occupied an important voice in the world. Users in many countries have made logging in and browsing the above content one of their daily behaviors. TikTok’s rise has undoubtedly caught up with the revolution in information communication, and its history is a good reflection of the development process of social media today. As a social media platform with short videos as its main selling point, TikTok cleverly captures the characteristics of today’s teenagers, who are curious about various things and occupy their leisure time through short videos. In the current society, with the popularity of social media and smart devices, more and more people are subjected to many distractions, making time extremely incomplete. Entertainment has become a brief part of busy working life, and the impact of time fragmentation has emerged. People have less time to study certain things carefully. So, short videos will be more competitive than hour-long movies or other shows. TikTok breaks traditional social restrictions through its extremely short video length and the operation of a powerful algorithmic recommendation system. Users can receive relevant videos recommended by algorithms without having to specifically search for something; just keep browsing the content recommended by the platform for them, which is thoroughly analyzed by the algorithm. Even adults are vulnerable to being drawn to TikTok and engaging in addictive behavior. According to the survey, on average, teenagers spend at least three hours per day on social media, which dramatically affects their sleep time (Katsiroumpa et al., 2025). Reduced sleep time dramatically increases the likelihood of physical and psychological problems in adolescents. Similarly, to encourage the development of short videos among teenagers, TikTok is forcing the fragmentation of teenagers’ time. Due to the decline in learning ability and concentration, these teenagers spend more and more time browsing short videos without actual nutrition to quickly get the answers they need and fast-food entertainment, such as girls who are interested in makeup shows. Boys spend a lot of time watching sports. (Viros-Martin et al., 2024). TikTok’s development has also promoted changes in information dissemination methods. Traditional media platforms still use text reporting as the core method to disseminate information. However, as TikTok has promoted, the way of information dissemination has become more visual and intuitive as a video platform. Many teenagers’ cognition of the world comes from these visual videos. As decentralization has become the main policy of these modern social media, anyone can edit and send relevant videos about daily life and news facts. Combined with short videos and fragmented social status quo, media gradually shifts from conveying facts to directly defining facts. Teenagers passively accept these fast video messages and participate in them. The popularity of the content does not depend on popularity and authority but on the interest and interaction of users. By browsing and participating in a large number of similar activities, they further promote the change in their awareness and behavior patterns.

As TikTok becomes famous around the world and occupies a large part of teenagers’ daily lives, many teenagers’ way of thinking is being changed by it, and they will be influenced by other users on TikTok, which will have a great impact on their consumption views. First of all, the values of teenagers are still in the development stage. In this period of such strong learning ability, teenagers will have ideas about the things they come into contact with, and social media has become an important channel for them to obtain information, observe the world and even establish identity. Teenagers interact with others on social media and try to construct a perception of themselves through feedback from others. For example, the videos on TikTok have greatly influenced the shaping of their values. After the decentralized development of these short videos, they are no longer reviewed for suitability for teenagers, and teenagers can brush almost any content they are interested in in daily use. The jumble of videos on TikTok has had an enormous impact on the search for self-identity for many teenagers, many of whom have come into contact with “Internet celebrities” on the platform, who, in the eyes of teenagers, have a large number of fans and high incomes. Even though the coronavirus pandemic has ended, its impact has been to completely change the world, with the social business system that was dominated by physical sales during the pandemic completely collapsing and replaced by an Internet-based economic system. TikTok has also become an important part of the online sales channel. Many Internet celebrities on the platform use videos to promote and sell their products, and the effect of Internet celebrities is endless on TikTok (Meng et al., 2023). People are easily affected by the image of Internet celebrities. The more gorgeously decorated broadcast rooms and well-dressed anchors are, the easier it is to promote the sales of commodities. Anchors attract the attention of many teenagers through exaggerated program effects and performances and sell them products far beyond their burden. Due to teenagers’ immaturity and need for identity, many of them have a strong demand for praise from others and are easily affected by irrational consumption behaviors brought about by the Internet celebrity effect. For example, many Internet celebrities broadcast their luxurious lives on TikTok and spend a lot of money buying luxury goods they do not need or even waste limited resources. To gain popularity and admiration from others (Ke & Wel, 2023). Teenagers want to live in the spotlight, so they start to imitate these irrational behaviors in exchange for attention; some young girls will imitate the female celebrity anchors on TikTok who focus on their appearance, buy a lot of cosmetics and luxury goods and post related videos. If someone likes and comments on their videos, these young girls will be even more crazy about buying luxury goods. As teenagers, many of them actually do not have enough money to support their hobbies, which will lead to a series of vicious events.

With people’s fearing, TikTok’s growing influence on teenagers’ addiction to it has reflected many problems in the platform in society and teenagers’ mental health has shown significant problems, and they have begun to imitate various irrational behaviors, and eventually, many people have begun to commit criminal acts in order to achieve their goals. Many Internet celebrities on TikTok are famous for playing pranks on others. These pranks are not just simple pranks; many people, in order to get more heat, began to carry out some extreme behavior, and even many times caused physical or psychological harm to the victim, which has violated the edge of the law. However, these people in order to get attention is still not stopping the trend. The heat brought by illegal behavior far exceeds other positive content, and these teenagers are eager to gain recognition and popularity from others quickly. Under this influence, some adolescents begin to view “criminal behavior” as a means to gain pleasure, attention, and a sense of accomplishment (Wood, 2021). For example, in March 2025, a skier threw a massive snowball at another gentleman and posted this “prank” video on TikTok, which gained great popularity and reaction. However, the man may face a lengthy prison term due to legal issues (Geh, 2025). The prevalence of prank behavior is not only related to teenagers’ imitation behavior but also because, with the gradual expansion of TikTok’s influence, more and more teenagers are exposed to such videos, and many of them are not subject to due control after committing prank crimes. Controlling criminal behavior on Internet platforms is very awkward. Due to the anonymity and ambiguity of the Internet, many teenagers can engage in behaviors they would not dare to engage in reality while hiding their identity, and more and more teenagers find it difficult to be discovered by others when uploading illegal videos on TikTok. The thrill has led teenagers to imitate and use their anonymity to upload videos of illegal behavior on TikTok. On an Internet where legal support is so difficult, teenagers are eager to maintain their lavish lifestyles in order to maintain the image they create on TikTok, constantly asking their parents for help, often in huge amounts, and when family members can’t afford their children’s expenses, the children are prone to more extreme things. When they can’t get money support from their parents, many of them turn to theft activities, from stealing money from family members to other people’s assets, to maintain their luxurious lifestyle. Teenagers show off and distribute videos on TikTok after obtaining a large amount of money through improper means, which get a lot of likes and replies. This positive feedback makes them rush to get involved in the criminal industry. What’s more extreme is that female teenagers are more likely to be involved in sexual crimes for money. A hot area of TikTok is sexy female live streaming. Many teenagers only pay attention to the tremendous amount of money these anchors get and start to imitate their behaviors. Attract the attention and reward of the male audience by wearing naked clothes (Stempel, 2025). TikTok does not have a detailed law to control the sexual crime of abducting teenagers, which makes more and more teenagers begin to use TikTok to engage in criminal activities.

In general, the rapid development of social media, such as TikTok, is the trend of The Times, and it also affects social changes in the opposite direction while developing rapidly. Although its rich and colorful content can provide many novel ways for teenagers to entertain themselves, TikTok’s decentralized content production model also brings the problem of uneven information quality, and some undesirable content may hurt teenagers’ values and behaviors. Teenagers are exposed to much negative information on the platform and try to gain popularity and identity by imitating these videos. In this process, they are gradually influenced to change their values. As time goes by, many teenagers become criminals. It can be said that the existence of TikTok has completely changed the concept of teenagers and has become a serious social problem.

Reference

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