Endlessly scrolling through your For You Page, mindlessly liking videos and checking the never-ending spectacle of comments.

Since its release in 2018, TikTok has captured the hearts of users and grown into one of the biggest social media platforms to exist. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it passes the time and you should delete it. 

Six months ago I deleted TikTok after having it for four years. During my time having it, I recognized that it wasn’t good for me; soaking in thousands of people’s life problems scarily similar to your own everyday on your For You Page can’t be remotely healthy or normal, but yet I didn’t care.

I was sucked in by its quick and entertaining videos, catered exactly to my liking. Liking, scrolling and checking the comments; an endless cycle that I couldn’t seem to get out of, and didn’t know if I wanted to. 

TikTok has more than one billion global users. Those users spent an average of an hour and a half per day on the app last year, more than any other social media platform, according to the digital analytics platform SensorTower.

According to psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge in an interview with CNN, TikTok’s algorithm in particular is “very sophisticated” and “very sticky,” which keeps teens engaged on the platform longer. 

After all, TikTok has everything you need, why go to another platform? An edit of a recent TV show you watched, your favorite artists’ concert videos, aesthetic videos of life in Italy and people ranting about how much their life sucks. 

But with having everything you need on TikTok you barely have time for anything else, things that you used to enjoy that you don’t even remember doing. You become engulfed in your own isolation, mindlessly scrolling for hours not even realizing all the time that has passed you by. 

According to the Guardian, TikTok can narrow attention span, aggravate mental health conditions, increase stress, anxiety, and depression and expose users to cyberbullying and unrealistic expectations.

TikTok is far from the only social platform to be scrutinized by lawmakers and mental health experts for its impact on teens, but it may be the worst. According to CNN, one study from a non-profit group claimed TikTok may surface potentially harmful content related to suicide and eating disorders to teenagers within minutes of them creating an account. 

And though TikTok can be a space for connection and creativity, its negative impacts prove to be far worse than the occasional creative videos that may pop up on your For You Page.

So delete TikTok. Understandably, that’s easier said than done; TikTok can be an outlet for many, an easy way to avoid the everyday problems of your own life and live vicariously through the videos you are constantly watching.

But by deleting it you can do the things that you used to do before you spent hours scrolling through videos everyday. Read a book, watch a movie, journal. You can live your own life instead of living vicariously through others.