Right-wing influencers: Hello! Earth to the adults!

There was a video going around at school the other day. Almost everyone knew it. During the break, people talked about it, people showed each other excerpts, laughed about it, and repeated sayings from it. The only problem was: it wasn't a normal video. It was a video with right-wing extremist content. Still, it was treated like a harmless meme. It has to be said that bullying is a big issue at my school. It often comes from boys, usually from certain groups, who push each other. Then comments are made about who doesn't fit into this “typical” image. And this despite the fact that my comprehensive school calls itself a “school without racism – school with courage”.

The situation is fueled by Tiktok. In addition to funny video clips, a lot of racist, misogynistic and anti-queer content appears in our news feeds every day. I've often seen people watch just one video and then walk around like they've spent hours on the topic. In conversations with friends, I always notice how many things are simply repeated without really being understood. And often they want to convince you of their opinion.

In our schoolyard, you are now noticed if you are not happy when someone is insulted because of their origins. And on the bus the other day I heard several young people talking about a video in which it was claimed that certain groups were to blame for all sorts of things. And suddenly people were sitting there repeating exactly that as if it were a fact. But since when is a 20-second Tiktok clip enough to form a political opinion?

Another situation that stuck in my mind: I was traveling with a friend who had a migration background herself, and suddenly someone next to us played a video saying that certain people didn't belong here. And then people laughed, even though they noticed that we were standing next to them.

What bothers me most is not even the videos themselves, but how much they seep into our everyday lives. That’s why I can no longer take the saying “It’s just social media” seriously. Because I notice how real opinions arise from their messages. And suddenly right-wing extremist content appears to be completely normal. Every person deserves the same rights - no matter where someone comes from, who someone loves or what someone believes in.

No worries. I don't want us all to delete our Tiktok accounts now. I just wish we were more conscious about it and didn't just adopt everything just because it sounds good or has a lot of likes. I notice in myself how important it is to get information from other sites and think about what is really true.

And I hope that adults finally understand how much Tiktok influences our reality and finally take it seriously. Not just in the sense of “less screen time,” but by seriously addressing what it does to us. Because it doesn't matter what we see every day. And even less what follows from it.

I don't want us all to think the same way. I just want us to start thinking for ourselves again. Because if we don't do that, in the end it will no longer be us who decide what we believe, but our feed.