Are TikTok Dances Actually School Counseling Signals?

Those hallway TikTok routines are saying something, school counselor- and it’s not what you think.

In this episode, we decode what those repeated dance loops reveal about belonging, status, and the adolescent brain. 

You’ll learn how synchronized movement functions as a social signal and why these micro-performances can be early indicators of connection, pressure, or exclusion on your campus.

If you’ve ever walked past a TikTok trend at school and wondered what you’re really seeing, this episode gives you the insight you’ve been missing.

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Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! 

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You're walking down the hallway, and there they are

(00:02):
again.
A cluster of kids blocking thelockers, maybe one's holding a
phone, three more are flingingtheir arms in what can only be
described as coordinated chaos.
Same song, same 10 seconds overand over and over again.
And you think, how is itpossible to care this much about

(00:27):
isolated movements?
And then they huddle around thephone, they check the replay,
and they give each other thosetiny little conspiratorial
smiles.
And then they do it again.
They are not auditioning for SoYou Think You Can Dance.
They're doing something olderand much more human.

(00:51):
Because what looks like randomimitation is actually one of the
deepest things that humans do tobelong.
And let me promise you this bythe end of this episode, you're
gonna understand why thoseTikTok routines aren't really
about dancing at all.
They're about identity survival.

(01:11):
Hey school counselor, welcomeback! In this episode of our Why
Did They Do That series, we'reasking a question every adult on
campus has thought about atleast once.
Why do they copy every TikTokdance known to humankind?
The answer might surprise you.
Because sometimes it's not aboutfun at all, it's about proof

(01:33):
that they still belong, they'reseeing, and that they're in.
Today we're gonna dig into thescience, the psychology, and the
real human stories behind thosesynchronized moves.
So if you're ready for somestraight talk, my friend, the
kind that gives you clarity anda little bit of rebellion,
you're gonna be in the rightplace.

(01:54):
I'm Steph Johnson, and this isthe School for School Counselors
podcast.
Okay, so before we goscientific, pause with me and
think about your ownadolescence.
Cringeworthy, right?
If it was anything like mine,oh, it takes a lot to make me go

(02:15):
back there.
But think about did you evermimic other people just to fit
in?
Or feel that tiny sting of beingoff trend and instantly on the
outside.
For me, and this is datingmyself, but it was guest jeans
back in the early 90s.
Couldn't afford them.

(02:36):
And then the beanie babiescraze.
I didn't understand it andreally didn't want any, but
still felt the disconnect whenmy friends talked about them
endlessly.
You probably have your ownversion of that memory.
Moments where belonging feltkind of tenuous and fragile.

(02:56):
These moments actually live inyour body and they're your
bridge to your students.
Because every kid that walksyour hallways is holding that
same question.
Do I belong here?
And this kind of empathy expandsyour radar.

(03:18):
So once you're standing insidethat space, you can start to see
what some of this synchronizedmovement really is and what it
isn't.
So let's peek under the hood.
In the 1990s, neuroscientistGiacomo Risalati and his team
discovered mirror neurons.
When we watch someone move, ourbrains fire as if we're moving

(03:42):
too.
That's why a student can see adance once and instantly feel
like they know it.
Their motor cortex has alreadyrehearsed the steps.
And when they finally do thedance and do it well, boom!
Dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins,the brain's belonging cocktail.

(04:04):
For adolescents, this is nottrivial.
It's safety and inclusion and anonverbal, you and me are in the
same tribe, kind of vibe.
A 2021 study by Wen and Teamfound that synchronized movement
activated teens' neural rewardsystems and boosted feelings of

(04:26):
closeness even among strangers.
Anthropologist Edward Halldescribed synchronous movement
as one of humanity's oldestbonding tools.
Mirroring is not mimicking, it'scommunication.
It's a shortcut to connectionthat is wired into our ancient

(04:49):
circuitry.
But biology is only half thestory because social media takes
that ancient signal andsupercharges it.
Every like becomes a dopaminehit.
Every repost is a tiny badge ofstatus.

(05:10):
And for teens, that status islike oxygen.
Nisi and Princeton 2019 foundthat teens use social media for
two things.
One, belonging, and two,comparison.
Shamariman and Team 2020 foundthat dance challenges offer a

(05:32):
quick path to belonging, butalso create instant ranking.
Who's good, who's cringe, andwho's invisible?
It's the same dynamic we talkedabout in the last episode, that
emotional Marco Polo effect.
Only now the call and responseis choreographed.
Students toss a dance into thedigital void, and then they wait

(05:56):
for a reply.
Every like, every stitch, everyhallway echo is another polo.
And here's the kicker and thething that grownups sometimes
forget.
Performing happens in thespotlight.
And the spotlight is exhausting.
And nowhere is that clearer thanin the lives of these two

(06:19):
students.
Meet Jada.
She is a sophomore trying tostay relevant in a fast-moving
campus culture.
For Jada, these dance trendsjust aren't fun anymore.
They're survival.
She says, if I don't post, it'slike I don't exist.

(06:40):
And then there's Kai.
He's a junior without reliableWi-Fi.
And in a school moving at TikTokspeed, Kai lives out of sync.
And he starts believing that hisversion of belonging doesn't
count.
Two different experiences, butone outcome: disconnection.

(07:02):
A 2022 Journal of AdolescentHealth study found excessive
social media use predictsanxiety and depression,
especially for girls, becausebelonging becomes something you
chase rather than something youfeel.
And this is where we come in.
We are bilingual in the worldsof online belonging and offline

(07:24):
human beingness.
We can translate one to theother, which is kind of a
superpower these days.
And this kind of translationmatters even more when we start
talking about culture.
Because for some students, dancetrends clash with cultural or
religious values.

(07:45):
For them, public performanceisn't just uncomfortable or
cringeworthy, it's off limits.
So what looks like resistancecould actually be resilience.
Juvenine and Team 2019 foundthat immigrant youth do best
when they can engage selectivelywith mainstream culture while

(08:06):
still holding on to heritagevalues.
They called it accommodationwithout assimilation.
Prudence Carter put thisbeautifully.
Our job isn't to get everybodydancing, it's to affirm every

(08:31):
valid path in belonging.
But as TikTok shows us, thatpath often shows up in their
bodies long before it shows upin their voices.
Let's talk embodied cognition.
For anxious or shy orneurodivergent students,
synchronized movement can be alifeline because they don't have

(08:55):
to talk their way in, they canmove their way in.
Cohen and Team 2021 found thatsynchronized movement increased
connection and emotion inferenceskills for autistic youth.
Tortora's work in dance movementtherapy echoes this.
When you mirror a child'smovement, you say, I see you.

(09:15):
You're communicating, you'resafe.
And here's where I want to sharesomething personal.
You know, I wasn't always aschool counselor.
I used to be a teacher in theschools.
And I used to teach dance.
One year we had a student whowas killed in a horrific

(09:37):
accident at my elementaryschool.
And the campus organized aballoon release in their honor.
Now you can tell this was a fewyears ago, right?
Because those are no longerallowed in most places.
But back then, that was what youdid.
So we went outside, we had thisbig balloon release, and after
the ceremony was over, they sentthe kids back to class.

(10:01):
Who do you suppose I received inmy classroom immediately
following that ceremony?
None other than the students ofthe classmate who died.
And you can imagine there weresome big feelings in that room.
There were lots of tears.
There were lots of kids who weretruly inconsolable, including

(10:24):
the student's cousin.
So I had a big task in front ofme.
I had no idea what to do, butbeing a movement specialist, I
did the only thing that I knewhow to do.
I led students through movement.
And we performed movementsequences together in

(10:44):
synchronization, slowly andmindfully.
And there were no more tears.
There was sadness, certainly,but it wasn't overwhelming.
Because we'd found commonground.
We felt connected to one anotherin a shared experience.
And it was one of the mostpowerful experiences of my life.

(11:08):
Movement is belonging.
Movement is mourning.
Movement is meaning.
So watch your students closely.
Who's leading?
Who's following?
Who hovers?
Who films the thing?
Every piece of those situationstells you something about how

(11:30):
your students are seekingsafety, agency, or inclusion.

And I'll tell you this (11:35):
attuning to students this way, noticing
their rhythms, spotting thedifference between connection
and pressure, that takes a lotout of us.
It's the kind of work that getseasier when you have people to
think it through with.
People who see what you see andwho get what's at stake.

(11:55):
If you're craving clarity andcommunity and answering
questions like this, the kindthat helps you hold the line
between your own belonging andburnout, that's exactly what
we're doing in the School forSchool Counselors Mastermind,
where we keep conversations likethis podcast going in real time
with real cases and with realsupport for the big hard

(12:18):
questions on campus.
So if that sounds like somethingyou need this year, I would love
to see you there.
There's going to be a link inthe show notes.
But let's talk about whathappens when the synchrony stops
being connection and insteadbecomes a trap.
Because movement can also buildhierarchy.

(12:40):
Media scholar Lamore Schiffmancalls this viral performativity
when joy becomes performance,and performance becomes
currency.
On campus, it shows up likeexcluding peers who can't keep
up or mocking students who missa step.

(13:00):
Moringo and Team 2020 foundnegative TikTok experiences
predicted lower self-esteem andhigher stress.
Shing and Chartrend 2003 foundthat students with lower
self-esteem mimic more unlessthey already feel like they
belong.
When a student seems tornbetween fitting in and feeling

(13:21):
forced, the question that canchange everything is: what about
this feels authentic?
And what feels like you have todo it?
That kind of brings us to thepart that you actually showed up
for.
What do we do with all of this?
When you take all of this, thebrain science, the pressure, the

(13:45):
culture, the instinct, you startto see something pretty clearly.
Students don't need us toacknowledge their dance trends.
They need us to anchor thebelonging that's underneath
them.
And the good news is that we cando that in ways that feel small
and ordinary and incrediblyhuman.

(14:08):
It starts with helping studentsunderstand what's happening in
their own bodies.
Kids feel less controlled by thetrend when they know why they're
drawn to it, when theyunderstand mirror neurons and
reward systems and the instincttoward synchrony.
When you explain that, it givesthem agency inside of the

(14:30):
dances.
And then there's modeling,showing students what low-stakes
movement looks like.
A silly movement warm-up in agroup, a rhythm game, clapping
and stomping, anything that saysyour body is allowed to be here.
The other thing that we forgetsometimes is that belonging has

(14:51):
more than one rhythm.
Some kids belong in the dance,some belong on the edge of it,
and some belong behind thecamera, or making people laugh,
or sitting shoulder to shoulderwith the other kid that doesn't
want to participate.
When you name those otherrhythms and opportunities, you
give students permission to stopperforming and just be.

(15:14):
And finally, there's somethingthat almost always works: the
offline moments, the ritualsthat don't need a phone or a
replay or an audience, aclapping pattern in morning
announcements, a shared deepbreath at the end of a lesson,
or a student staff dance that'smessy and chaotic and absolutely

(15:37):
perfect.
Those kinds of moments matter.
Ding and colleagues calledsynchrony social glue, and they
100% meant it.
A campus with a shared rhythm,even tiny ones, become a place
where belonging isn't somethingthat kids have to chase.
It just lives in the walls.

(16:00):
And when that happens, thesedance trends and other little
social expectations start tolose their pressure.
The spotlight dims just a littlebit, and students stop
performing for visibility andstart connecting for real.
When you walk down that hallwaytomorrow and you see that same

(16:21):
cluster of kids crowding thelockers, the same song you've
heard a hundred times, the same10 seconds looping again and
again, I hope you see itdifferently.
I hope that now you won't seechaos or just performance or
eye-rolling repetition.

(16:43):
I hope you see the instinctunderneath it.
That ancient human drive to syncup with somebody else, to feel
part of something, to saywithout words, stick with me.
I'm here, and you're here too.
Because that's what all this is.

(17:04):
That's what they're trying tosolve with all the shoulder pops
and the spins and thechoreography.
They're trying to answer thesame question every adolescent
in the history of time hasasked.
Where do I fit?
It's not immaturity, my friend,it's development.
And if we can see that clearly,really see it, then we can meet

(17:28):
them in places far deeper andmore important than a dance
trend.
We can help them sort thebelonging from the performing,
the this is me from the this iswhat gets me noticed, the safety
from the spotlight.
Tucked inside that little crowdis the heartbeat of adolescence,

(17:51):
and it's messy and rhythmic andhopeful and desperately human.
Hey, thanks for walking throughthis with me today.
So last week we exploredlanguage, today we explored
movement.
Next time, we're gonna talkabout another deep mystery of
the adolescent brain.

(18:11):
Why do they wear hoodies in90-degree heat?
It's a mystery for the ages, andwe're going to unravel it in the
next episode.
So keep listening to the Schoolfor School Counselors podcast.
I'm Steph Johnson, trying tohelp you see the science behind
these strange behaviors, andmaybe the humanity too.

(18:32):
So until next time, keep dancingand take care.