A new trend on China’s TikTok called “Things I’m ashamed to admit” involves the platform’s young users engaging in an egregious amount of oversharing on social media under the guise of dispelling the notion that people are living perfect lives.
The growing TikTok trend is typically found attached to the hashtag “Social Media is Fake” or the phrase “social media is fake, here are things I’m ashamed to admit,” and is circulating on pretext of making people feel better about themselves on social media, according to a report by the Guardian.
Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc. Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Some of the issues TikTok users have been admitting under the hashtag — which has reportedly been used more than 26,000 times since March — are fears about financial security, never finding love, and progression in life.
Additionally, the soundtrack attached to the TikTok trend has been used in over 463,000 videos, which have acquired millions of views.
One 24-year-old TikTok user named Hannah, for example, said she was sharing “things I’m embarrassed and ashamed about” to “help you feel less alone,” saying, “I struggle to keep friendships because I am so bad at replying to messages and I ignore people due anxiety of making plans.”
“I have OCD but I am scared to talk about it in depth to anyone, even my psych, because of how taboo in nature some of my intrusive thoughts are,” Hannah adds. “I went to [university] for five years and got my masters but I still work as a barista and earn minimum wage whilst all my peers are getting ‘proper jobs.'”
“I have bipolar and I hate the things I have done and shared about myself online in the past when I have been unwell,” Hannah continues. “I feel so embarrassed knowing that so many people have seen such a private and intimate side of me that I never wanted to share with anyone.”
A second TikTok user named Sana shares, “I feel alone pretty much all of the time even though I have amazing friends, I can’t escape the feeling of loneliness.”
“I’ve been unemployed for almost a year now because I took a risk and it didn’t work out,” a third TikTok user named Niki reveals, adding, “I’ve been using the same makeup for years because I can’t afford any new ones.”
A fourth TikTok user named Billie Jo said she “dropped out of sixth” grade and has “no qualifications,” and therefore believes she will “never be successful.”
“I literally have zero friends,” she adds. “I don’t have a job and haven’t for a while, anxiety controls a lot of my life — I think I’m a bad person and I don’t really like who I am physically or mentally.”
A fifth TikTok user named Rikke Drue, meanwhile, admitted, “I have a bachelor degree but I work as a waiter because I don’t what to do with my career,” and “I wore braces for seven years but I’m still not smiling with my teeth because I think I look stupid.”
London-based psychiatrist Mark Silvert told the Guardian “There is a risk of oversimplifying complex psychological issues or inadvertently glamorizing unhealthy coping mechanisms.”
“By oversharing and getting into a routine of being privy to strangers’ situations, comparison is bound to creep in which can lead to unrealistic standards which then further diminish one’s self-worth,” Silvert added.
Others, meanwhile, have expressed different types of concerns regarding the level of information TikTok users allow the app to collect, especially given that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.
“There are a lot of people in Tennessee that are very concerned about the way TikTok is basically building dossiers on our kids,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew during a senate hearing in February.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
