I am an autistic 29 year old guy who started developing a serious addiction to Instagram and TikTok during the COVID pandemic. It got worse around 2022 when I lost my job. TikTok, like Reddit, does have lots of very informational and interesting content on there and I enjoyed watching lots of travel videos as well as many math and science related videos. However even those "educational" travel videos can become toxic as it's mainly travel influencers who travel all over the world to visit nice places and make give us FOMO. In reality, they most likely come from wealthy families, have an abnormally high carbon footprint flying to all sorts of different places, and likely staying in cheap Airbnbs instead of hotels.
It started when I got into some problems with some younger women on TikTok I didn't know but made me very angry for some reasons. I made some nasty messages about them until one of them called me out. Thinking about it now, I very much regret it now and I wished I could apologize. After this, I've been contemplating about deleting TikTok. I already uninstalled Instagram but I still don't want to delete it completely as I have lots of great material on there from the past.
TikTok, and social media in general, has became a massive scourge for younger people. It has made marginalized men more misogynistic and chauvinistic. It has made marginalized CIS heterosexual people more homophobic and extremely transphobic. It has made people in general much more racist towards other ethnicities.
Nowadays, TikTok has suddenly became an extremely vile place for anyone who is Indian. It's a Chinese social media giant that was banned in India for some bizarre reasons, but this means that India has become the punching bag for jokes. I don't mean playful jokes. I mean genuinely disgusting and racist comments I am of Indian-origin (born to Indian immigrant parents) and right now there is a conflict going on with India and Pakistan. On one video, there is a comment made by an anonymous user that has over 3,000 likes that said "I hope Pakistan nukes the sh** out of India and cleans the entire world of this plague!" On another video, another comment with over 10,000 likes said "The smelliest war in the world!" India has a myriad of problems, especially when it comes to public safety and corruption. However after reading some of these comments, I am ready to pull the plug on my TikTok account and say "Bye Bye" to TikTok forever.