Over the years, the social media app Tiktok has become an incredibly quick path for resources and information. People also enjoy sharing their hobbies and special interests on social media, like fashion, music, editing, and–of course–reading. The reading side of Tiktok has become known as “Booktok”, a place in social media where anyone can find book recommendations, annotations, share their opinions, and so on.
However, within the couple years of Booktok’s growth in popularity, teens and young adults have begun to become more interested in reading, thanks to Tiktok. Which, yay! But it has its consequences.
Many genres promoted and recommended on Tiktok that reach teen audiences are, usually, very inappropriate and contain details young children should not read on the daily.
For example, a genre called “dark romance” has been trending on Tiktok for several months, where it contains a romance with underlining subjects of murder, stalking, mental illnesses, or assault. In a popular Tiktok book, Haunting Adeline, is basically about a woman falling in love with her dangerous stalker. I wouldn’t exactly call these books amazing pieces of literature.
Even other somewhat normal romance books made popular on Tiktok can still contain inappropriate content and material. However, teens usually tend to gravitate towards these books because content creators on the app tell them it’s good, so they automatically begin to immerse themselves in indecorous literature.
This only happens because the people recommending these books are not teens themselves, but adults. Grown adults, perhaps most of them not having the goal to subject teens to the genres, share the books on Tiktok, leading younger readers to favor their opinions and recommendations.
I could say the adults shouldn’t share their opinions on social media or should at least put warnings of inappropriate content in their videos, but most teens will still continue to read them. Rather, I believe that shifting the content from dark romances to more grown-up books, to not only subject teens to better genres, but also the entire reading audience.
I , for example, read books with those improper types of topics at a very young age, and while I’m not traumatized or faced with present nightmares, I definitely should not have read those books as a younger teen and they did not in any way expand my knowledge or make me smarter. Rather, autobiographies with interesting stories of real people or works of fiction with messages changing perspectives on my life have increased my maturity and cognizance.
I definitely understand reading books just for fun and reading silly little love stories, but most of the books on Tiktok are not very silly or fun, rather just very bad and inappropriate. So shifting Booktok’s content of inapposite books to enlightened, much more cheerful literature could definitely benefit teens and many other readers.
And if you are a Booktok teen yourself, please stop reading the bad romance books about hot stalkers and maybe shift to something a bit more happy-go-lucky. Or wait til you’re an adult.