TikTok and Instagram turned me into a leftist. Here’s how X (Twitter) helped me escape.
Social media plays a significant role in shaping the opinions of those 35 and under — it’s the primary news source for most in that age group, one
survey found.
Some stats
report that daily screen time for 16- to 24-year-olds is nearly eight hours among females and seven hours among males. To put that in perspective — that’s equivalent to the average time in a school day.
Regarding TikTok in particular, 44 percent of its regular news consumers are between 18 and 29,
according to the Pew Research Center.
I am among that group — and my daily TikTok and Instagram usage nearly changed the trajectory of my life.
I grew up in Dallas and attended a Christian private school from kindergarten to eighth grade, and I wasn’t exposed to many alternative viewpoints. In my formative years, I was dedicated to and focused on my faith.
In sixth grade I got a cellphone, mostly so I could communicate and coordinate with my parents, who didn’t want me to have a phone, but allowed it for family logistics.
My interest in political and social issues took shape in eighth grade, when I increased my social media usage and began following feminist Instagram accounts, thanks to celebrities and influencers sharing posts and other algorithm suggestions.
Feminism, in and of itself, didn’t seem like a radical concept at first. But the accounts I viewed over time were intersectional feminist ones that intertwined their feminist messages with pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ messaging. This started to change my ideological outlook on the world. Highly emotional arguments from the left viewed over and over desensitized me.
Throughout high school, I continued ingesting countless hours of Instagram and TikTok content — and increasingly leftist political views. Looking back, I can see how social media drew me further and further away from reality, my family, and my faith.
By 2020, as a freshman in high school and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID-19 pandemic, I was fully committed to leftist causes.
I even had the phrase “Black Trans Lives Matter” in my Instagram bio for a while. I took part in “Blackout Tuesday” on Instagram, posting my black square like a good little soldier, showing my solidarity with the cause. I knew very little about the Black Lives Matter group at the time.