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  2020-08-23

  Tick Tock

  The pandemic was the least of my worries as a freshman in college who was still adjusting, but it soon overtook my life. Not only did I not come back from spring break, but the entire university shifted to online learning as it was too unsafe to be in class. I left my perfectly curated dorm, my professors, and friends to something that I had not given ten minutes of my time a month prior. The pandemic had been looming in the background and I had heard about it and never really thought it would affect me but I was very wrong. The virus changed my view of schooling, the way the government looks at its citizens and how we treat one another. During the initial lockdown I observed many ways in which everyone tried to cope with our reality. There were those making banana bread, sourdough bread, and binging tv shows on Netflix such as Tiger King. Then there were the college and high school kids who were all staying up till the early hours of the morning mindlessly scrolling through social media, more specifically TikTok, since there was no school to wake up early for. Now I understand that social media can be, and is toxic, but the app TikTok has made a relatively good space for all people and has proven to be a good way to spread information to a younger generation rapidly. As someone who had only a few months ago been writing papers and doing homework in my dorm I can without a doubt say I would never have envisioned myself on an app watching 30 or 60 second videos for hours on end. The videos on the app are comedy related, informative on niche topics, activism, such as the Black Lives Matter Protests, political and just about everything under the sun. Although it is only an app that could vanish at any moment, it has become part of millions of college and high school students' lives. It has offered a distraction from all of the uncertainty in the world and an outlet to share their experiences. I personally attempted to make a TikTok with my friends as we kept six feet apart from each other and although it never turned out it still offered a distraction from the fact that we were not able to just go to one another's houses and hang out - we had to meet in our old high school parking lot. The app seems so benign to those who are not on it, but from what I have seen it has offered happiness in a time of world turmoil.