For Xgens and millennials, the internet has been a place for people to overshare through Facebook location “check-ins” and Instagram posts chronicling every detail of their latest vacations. Some Gen Z’s, in contrast, have turned casual oversharing into something much darker – publicly sharing stories of trauma for internet clout. To monitor and ensure your child is not sharing their deepest, darkest secrets on TikTok, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. This course provides you access to all GKIS parenting courses, agreements, and supplements to teach your kids independent resilience and good coping skills, all of which work to build a positive parent-child partnership and avoid a digital injury.
What is “trauma dumping”?
Trauma dumping is when a person overshares difficult information with another person without their consent.[1] Trauma dumping for content is done when a person constantly talks about a traumatic experience, even sometimes going so far as to recreate or reenact the traumatic incident online.[2]
Tramadumpers typically do not consider their impact on viewers and are not seeking advice.[1] The sharing often occurs in inappropriate places and times to someone who cannot understand and process someone else’s trauma.[3]
How does trauma dumping differ from venting?
Trauma dumping differs from venting because venting is the release of pent-up emotions rather than details of traumatic experiences.[2] When venting, a person is more mindful of the other person’s boundaries and how much they should share. Venting is an ordinary action people take to blow off steam, while trauma dumping is a potentially harmful action.
Why is sharing trauma for views and likes problematic?
Sharing or posting about a personal experience is not inherently wrong. But when you are sharing about it on social media often, it can become a maladaptive coping mechanism, meaning that instead of reducing the effect of a traumatic event on one’s mental health, you instead cause more harm and increase long-term stress.[4]
How Viewing Trauma Dumping Affects Viewers
The TikTok hashtags #trauma and #traumatok have a combined total of more than 22.5 billion views. As of 2023, Tiktok has 1.53 billion users, meaning that videos with the aforementioned hashtags have been viewed more times than there are users on the app.[5]
I asked a frequent TikTok user to recount her experience viewing a #traumatok video. She shared, “I was scrolling through my TikTok For You Page and saw a video a girl shared of her last conversation with her mother before her mother passed away from Covid-19. It made me feel sad, and I thought about it pretty often throughout the day. I told my friend about it later, and she said she had seen it too and it made her cry. Her dad passed away from Covid-19, and it hit home for her and reminded her of her dad’s passing. I can’t imagine seeing that kind of content as an 11-year-old or something.”
Viewers of trauma content can also inadvertently desensitize themselves. By viewing a trauma dump video and then scrolling to a happy or neutral video, they can prevent themselves from feeling the full impact of the content and thus are conditioning themselves to not adequately process traumatic content.[6] Through viewing traumatic content, viewers may inadvertently open themselves up to their own traumas. To learn more about doom-scrolling, see our GKIS article, “Doom-Scrolling: How Much Bad News Can We Take?”
What Parents Can Do
Preventing children from viewing #traumatok content is critical to ensure your child does not suffer from a digital injury.
Keep your child safe by:
Limiting and monitoring your child’s only content using our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. This resource helps you set parental controls and smart tools created to filter content and manage online behavior.
Keep the conversation going using our free GKIS Connected Family Agreement. By having regular discussions and co-viewing your child’s content, the learning continues both ways.
Preparing your children for social media usage through our GKIS Social Media Readiness Course. This course will help your child stay safe from digital injury and prepare them to “get social.”
Sexual content on a social media platform with millions of young children should never be allowed, but lines become blurred when TikTok users find subversive ways to share fetish content with others. Behind seemingly innocent videos lay adults seeking to arouse one another, uncaring that it may be occurring right in front of your child. Protect your child from inappropriate online content and prevent digital injury with our GKISScreen Safety Toolkit.
What is a “Fetish” or “Kink”?
A fetish refers to sexual arousal resulting from objects or a specific body part that is not typically seen as sexual.[1] Fetish objects or body parts could include feet, hair, food, or even balloons. For those with a fetish, sex may be less pleasurable or even impossible without the presence of the fetish object.
In contrast, kink refers to unconventional or bizarre sexual activity with self or others.[2] While fetishes can become sexual disorders, kinks typically do not progress to that level. More specifically, Fetishistic Disorder occurs when a person’s fetish escalates to the point of being persistent and distressing.[3] To meet the conditions for this disorder, an individual must experience sexual urges that meet the definition of a fetish, these fetishes must cause distress or impairment in functioning, and the object they fetishize must not be used in cross-dressing or sexual stimulation.[4]
Fetishistic Disorders are typically seen in males and emerge during puberty.[4] Fetishistic Disorder can make it hard for individuals to develop intimate relationships and can cause sexual dysfunction.[4] Studies have also found that fetishism is often correlated with other mental health issues, substance abuse, criminal justice involvement, and an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections.[4]
How are TikTok Users Posting This Content?
Most social media websites have content filters and bots that flag any content that can be considered inappropriate or of a sexual nature. However, most of the fetish content on TikTok does not contain nudity, instead appealing to fetishes that utilize implied sexual behavior.
Popular TikTok user Lena Rae (@lenarae.lh), who has over 230k followers, has created a collection of videos titled, “Is This Fetish Content?” that identifies this type of content and calls out the users to post it.
In a video with almost 18 million views, Lena Rae reacts to a seemingly innocent video from user “putinnu” (a not-so-thinly veiled attempt at sexual innuendo “put it in you”). The video shows a woman in a wedding dress shoving a glass vase into a multi-tiered cake and then proceeding to pour multi-colored, runny frosting inside the vase. Lena Rae points out the vase is a phallic shape. She also comments on the consistency of the frosting and how the person is spilling it as they pour. The woman in the video explains that the frosting is going to run all over the cake, a reference that Lena Rae says is to appeal to those with a “sploshing” fetish. Lena Rae points out that the actions in the video are purposely repetitive and aim to appeal to a fetishistic audience.[5]
While these videos may not be expressly sexual like other content on TikTok, the hidden fetish content videos are flooded with comments from adults who are taking pleasure in the content being suggested to them. This creates a dangerous combination of adults with sexual fetishes consuming content that is “safe” enough to also show up on the For You Page of young kids.
How Viewing This Content Can Affect Kids
Viewing sexual content at any age can be harmful to one’s mental health, but when viewed during a time of development, it can have lasting effects into adulthood.
Experts have found that young children who view pornographic content frequently become isolated, withdrawn, anxious, or depressed.[6] Consumption of online sexual content at a young age can lead to premature sexual experimentation as well as other high-risk behaviors, dating violence, cannabis abuse, or the development of harmful fetishes.[7]
What Parents Can Do
Open communication about sexual content can save your child from digital injury and stunted development. Some experts even recommend talking to your child as young as 9 years old about the difference between “good” and “bad” pictures.[8] Experts believe that in doing so, children will be better able to identify groomers or online predators and be less susceptible to them.
There are also various protective factors that one can turn to to prevent early exposure to sex. Creating an environment where a child feels connected to their parents and family can help them feel more comfortable communicating about the content they consume. To help facilitate difficult conversations about online content, try out our free GKISConnected Family Screen Agreement. Fostering healthy conversations and helping your child create positive self-perception can help kids to seek validation from family and peers rather than online strangers.
Fast, entertaining content seems to be the only way to hold the attention span of today’s children and teens. This becomes an issue when virality becomes more important than the content being put out or the audience who will receive it. TikTok users have realized that they can quickly create a viral video by taking Reddit stories and resharing them over clips from popular video games like Minecraft, Roblox, and Subway Surfers. Today’s article covers why this content is dangerous and how you can keep your child safe from digital injury with ourScreen Safety Toolkit.
The Popularity of Minecraft, Roblox, and Subway Surfers
Minecraft
Between 2016 and 2021, Minecraft users have risen from 40 million to 93 million with a peak of 131 million users in 2020.[1] Surveys have found that up to 54% of boys and 46% of girls aged 3 to 12 play Minecraft.[2] The popularity of Minecraft is undeniable. Take a look down any aisle of children’s clothing and you will find item after item filled with popular references from the game. Covid-19 only increased the popularity of the online game accessible on most gaming consoles, with users increasing by 14 million from 2020 to 2021.[2]
Roblox
Roblox is another popular children’s game that has bankrolled off the pandemic and increased in users over the past few years. Between 2021 and 2020, the platform added more than 146 million users to its servers. In 2016, Roblox had 30+ million users. Today they have more than 202 million monthly active users.[3]
While the average user of Minecraft is 24 years old, only 14% of Roblox users are over 25 years old. 67% of Roblox users are under 16 years old, and 54.86% of users are under 13 years old.[3] The popularity of Roblox is reflected on TikTok through a large number of Roblox fan accounts owned by young users. In fact, there have been many audio trends on the platform that are accredited to edits by Roblox users.
Subway Surfers
While less popular than Minecraft and Roblox, Subway Surfers is still the most downloaded and most-played mobile game in the app store. Between 2021 and 2022, Subway Surfers saw more than 2 times the number of downloads with 5.43 million daily users.[4] These numbers are impressive, as, unlike Minecraft and Roblox, Subway Surfers is only available for download on mobile smartphones. It is not available on any other gaming platform. While there is no available data for the average age of Subway Surfer players, the game is recommended for ages 9 and up.
All three of these games are different in their gameplay but similar in their popularity and appeal to younger audiences. Videos made with clips from these games are sure to catch the attention of a younger audience who is trying to view content related to their interests.
Harmful Reddit Content and How They Use Kids’ Games
Reddit claims on its website to be “a network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies, and passions.”[5] Users post on so-called “subreddits” dedicated to topics from the general to much more specific niches.
Today there are over 2.8 million subreddits and Reddit has 52 million users daily.[6] Of their monthly users, 79% are between the ages of 18 to 34 and almost 64% of those users are men.[7] When children encounter posts from Reddit, they are viewing material often made for and by adult men, leading to some very inappropriate content.
A simple search for “Reddit stories” on TikTok will show you video after video of Reddit threads overlaid with a video of someone playing a kid’s game and read by a voiceover. The threads contain content from various subreddits like “/AmITheAsshole” but most contain inappropriate “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work) content. A scroll down the search shows video after video of content with titles like, “My mom keeps having sex with my boyfriend…” or “What do you tell your partner when you’re horny?” or “What did you not know about sex until you lost your virginity?” The last question is from a Subway Surfers video with 1.6 million likes and 13.5 million views from a user with similar content and over 55.4 thousand followers.
The creators of these videos use the popularity of these kids’ games to bring more viewers to their content and help their virality. In doing so, they are promoting sex, adult situations, and overall unsafe content. Each of these videos is followed up by hundreds or thousands of comments from young kids and teens adding their own answers to the question proposed. A quick look at commenters’ profiles revealed that half were between the ages of 13 to 17, and each was commenting on their own sexual experiences to millions of viewers.
Set up content preferences and block out video keywords or put the account on restricted mode in the settings and privacy section of TikTok.
View an account’s watch and comment history and see what content your child is consuming and interacting with.
For younger children, consider waiting before allowing them to have their own TikTok account.
When they do adopt a TikTok account, scroll together to choose what content they view and influence the algorithm that will offer content automatically.
As your child gets older, work with them to establish what they are doing and looking at on social media. Preparing them for the possibility of adult content can help them in discovering it on their own and possibly suffering a digital injury.
If you fear your child may be watching inappropriate Reddit content without your knowledge and permission, check out our GKISScreen Safety Toolkit. This toolkit helps to empower parents and provides them with smart tech tools to filter, monitor, and manage online behavior.
To protect your child, prevent digital injury, and prepare them for social media use check out our GKIS Social Media Readiness Course.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for researching how TikTok users use Reddit content and kids’ games for views.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
True crime is a popular trend that plays off our fascination with the morbid. As popular streaming services produce documentaries and dramatizations to meet the demand for true crime content, these crimes become less of a horrific event and more of a meme or something to live tweet. These exposés also tend to be led by actors who are well known for their looks, like Evan Peters, Zac Efron, and Ross Lynch, adding more to the romanticization of serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. Today’s article covers why this romanticization is dangerous and how you can keep your child safe from digital injury with our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit.
Why has true crime skyrocketed in popularity?
Netflix’s recent limited-run Dahmer series has been viewed by 56 million households for a total of 701.37 million hours, putting it as their second most-viewed English Netflix series of all time.[1] In fact, true crime documentaries have covered the Netflix top 10 trending list for a combined total of 232 days, meaning that if your child is logging into Netflix, chances are they will be suggested one of these exposés.[2] There is no denying that true crime is hot content, and it does not seem to be declining in popularity anytime soon. This begs the question of why our society and humans, in general, are so obsessed with the morbid acts of our fellow human beings.
Evolutionary scientists have attributed this obsession to the fact that murder, rape, and theft have been part of our society for as long as humanity has existed. We are fascinated with learning about the facts of true crime as a form of human preservation and how we can protect ourselves and our families from the same fate.[3]
Psychologists agree and add that we also feel a sort of elation at these stories, glad that we are not the victims of such a crime. They also believe that we feel elated that we are not the perpetrator of the crime either.[4] This suggests on some level that we can relate to the perpetrator, a feeling that adds to the romanticization of criminals.
Psychology and Social Effects of Romanticizing Criminals
Movie violence as shown in true crime documentaries and dramatizations has been shown to have real lasting effects on viewers, including overall desensitization to real-life violence. A study found that youth with medium levels of exposure to TV/movie violence had much lower blood pressure when viewing violent media compared to those with low exposure.[5] These results show that sustained exposure to violent media leads to emotional numbing when presented with violence.
Following the release of the 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, in which Ted Bundy is played by Zac Efron, a concerning TikTok trend began of young girls dressing up as Bundy’s victims using makeup to create blood, bruising, and bite marks on their skin.[6]
These exposés create an impression on children and teens that they are not real events, but rather just make-believe, a trend, or a meme. The use of conventionally attractive actors to play these criminals leads to the romanticization of their crimes. This delusion creates hardships for the families of these crimes who watch as the atrocities their family faced are reduced to trends and memes online.
Mother of Dahmer victim Tony Hughes, Shirley Hughes, shared that learning about the series and its content brought her to tears. She told The Guardian, “I shed tears. They’re not tears of sorrow, and it’s not disbelief in the Lord. The tears [are] tears of hurt because it hurts. It hurts real bad.”[7] Not only do these exposés hurt our children, but they hurt the families of these violent crimes and cause them to relieve their trauma publicly over and over.
What Parents Can Do
If your child is interested in true crime, it is important to express to them that is okay and understandable. Notable psychologists believe that interest in crime is healthy and something that is natural, so long as that interest is confined to health habits.[8] Express to your child that these true crime stories are more than just a “limited-run show” but something that has real-life effects on people. Perhaps even share with them the thoughts and feelings of the families of these crimes as an empathy-building exercise.
Another important action you can take is to look at parental guides online for the media your child is consuming so that you can understand exactly what is in it. Also, sit and watch the show together so that you can fast forward through anything inappropriate and have a conversation about it.
To help guide you in these healthy conversations, check out our GKIS Connected Families Screen Agreement to work with your child to create a collaborative, living document.
If you fear your child may be watching these true crime exposés without your knowledge and permission, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. This toolkit helps to empower parents and provides them with smart tech tools to filter, monitor, and manage online behavior.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for researching true crime exposés and the romanticization of serial killers. To learn more about true crime and its consequences check out our article, “Is Your Child Following True Crime?”.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Dangerous TikTok trends have previously sent kids to the hospital, now a new trend is sending them to jail. The forever infamous “Tide Pod challenge,” which spawned from an internet meme, gained huge traction among young users on the platform TikTok after videos of kids eating the toxic laundry detergent went viral. These videos resulted in thousands of calls to poison control, and hundreds of trips to the emergency room. While this shocking TikTok trend faded away in early 2018, a new trend dubbed “Devious Licks” has rocked schools across the nation and lead to the arrests of several students.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a social media and video-sharing platform that is primarily marketed to kids and teens. Since its launch in 2016, it has become one of the most popular social media sites attracting over 1 billion monthly users. What drives the popularity of this platform is that it offers millions of short user-created videos that feature an enormous variety of content. Through the use of hashtags, TikTok users can see which viral videos are attracting the largest number of views from fellow TikTokers. The most popular videos are re-created or copied by other users to increase their chances of having their videos viewed which is essentially how TikTok trends get started. With so many users competing for likes and attention, these viral trend videos spread like wildfire.
TikTok has previously come under fire for its initial lack of action in response to the posting of “Tide Pod challenge” videos. CBS reports that there were at least ten deaths related to this challenge. Unfortunately, TikTok failed to promptly block uploads to their platform that featured the hashtag “Tide Pod challenge” which ultimately would have prevented this trend from getting the amount of exposure that it did.
The New Dangerous Trend: “Devious Licks”
Early September 2021, when kids across the nation finally began going back to school after a year of COVID19-required virtual learning, videos featuring the hashtag “DeviousLicks” swept through TikTok. Unlike the name suggests, this newest trend does not actually involve physically licking dangerous objects. According to UrbanDictionary.com the word lick is slang for an illegal way to quickly get money, primarily through the theft of property. The “Devious Licks” trend is a competition among kids and teens to see who can film themselves while stealing the riskiest or most important objects without getting caught and then subsequently uploading the video onto TikTok as proof of participation. While this trend has reportedly spanned schools across the nation, these videos are most often shot in middle and high schools.
How did it start?
This viral video trend allegedly began when one student posted a video to TikTok featuring a box of disposable face masks they purported to have stolen from the campus. The viral video, which received almost half a million views, was captioned, “A month into school and got this absolutely devious lick… Should’ve brought a mask from home. Now look at you walkin round campus maskless you dirty dog.” Since this first video was posted, things escalated drastically.
A list of some of the stolen items featured in devious licks videos include:
Fire extinguishers
Fire Alarms
Exit Signs
Bathroom Supplies
soap dispensers and paper towel/toilet paper dispensers, urinal cakes
Classroom Supplies:
lab materials, computers, books, a class pet, pencil sharpeners, projectors
Physical Property:
sinks, toilets, stall walls, a principal’s car parts, locker doors, cellphones, SMART boards, desks/chairs, clocks
One video even shows a shoe being stolen off the foot of a student who was sitting in a bathroom stall. Other videos show student restrooms that have been completely vandalized and rendered almost useless. Parents at a middle school in Texas have been asked to send their kids to school with their own hand soap due to the dispensers having all been stolen from the restrooms.
Police Are Stepping In
To stop this trend from continuing, law enforcement officials have begun arresting students across several different states. In Kentucky, eight students have been arrested due to their participation in the “Devious Licks” challenge. Four of the students were charged with theft while the remaining four were charged with vandalism. Five more students were charged in Florida, one student charged in Arizona, and one student charged in Alabama.
TikTok’s Response
While it is obvious that a lot of damage has occurred across many different schools that are already struggling amidst the global pandemic, TikTok has responded to this phenomenon by continually blocking all “Devious Licks”- related content from being uploaded onto their site to prevent more damage. Unfortunately, the criminal records of the students who were arrested in connection with this trend cannot be fixed as easily as soap dispensers.
Why is this happening?
Today’s kids and teens spend so much of their time in virtual neighborhoods. Social media platforms are where our kids go to socialize, meet new people, make impressions, and try to fit in. Adolescence is a time when we constantly crave feelings of validation and social media platforms like TikTok can be a powerful avenue for seeking validation through attention. Kids will strive for popularity on TikTok by participating in potentially (and sometimes obviously) dangerous trends such as the “Devious Licks” challenge because the validation they receive from others feels good. Their brains are wired with a powerful reward system that can make their better judgment take a back seat to their need to feel embraced, even if it seems artificial to us.
What Kids Need from Their Parents
The negative implications of this newest TikTok trend are obvious. Aside from the damage to school property and the loss of personal property from other students, the potential loss of future opportunities due to a permanent criminal record because of participating in a fleeting internet trend is tragic.
To avoid these kinds of negative outcomes, parent-child communication and parental oversight are key. Dr. B offers essential tips for fostering this kind of communication in her GKIS Connected Family Course. With this online course, you will learn how to create a safer screen home environment through fun parenting techniques designed to guide sensible screen management.
Additionally, Dr. B’s tried and true GKIS Social Media Readiness Training is a valuable tool that teaches tweens and teens about the inherent risks of social media and ways to be prepared when encountering them. Remember to be kind, create an environment that allows for open dialogue between you and your kids, and rest assured that you have provided your family with the tools to facilitate safe and healthy internet practices. You can also stay up to date on relevant internet/gaming topics with our free articles on the GKIS Blog.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Mackenzie Morrow for researching TikTok’s newest dangerous “Devious Licks” trend and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for Trauma Dumping and its harmful effects.
