Inside TikTok: Nadia Maxwell’s Experiment on Algorithms and Youth Culture

A must listen if you have young kids on social media

We sit down with Christchurch-based documentary filmmaker Nadia Maxwell to explore the fascinating social media experiment she conducted, delving into how TikTok curates and delivers content to young users. Through her insightful investigation, Nadia sheds light on the algorithms shaping the next generation's digital experiences and the hidden forces behind their feeds.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Heads with the John and Ben Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Cheers to Dilma making the world a better TEA guest
on the.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Phone, Nadia Maxwell is a documentary maker, someone who's probably
far too educated to appear on our show, but thank
you for joining us, Nadia.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Just to give the backstory, you're as John I said,
you're a documentary maker, and you set up some pages
on social media sites basically said you were a thirteen
year old girl.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, and you know, we're prompted. I gave my interests
in things like animal's health and fitness, you know, tayus Worth,
things that my own kind of teenage girls are interested in.
I thought it might, you know, maybe take a week
or so for disturbing content to crop up. It took
tiktop twenty two minutes and fifteen seconds for the first
kind of really heavy traumatic content to be pushed my way.

(00:48):
And so then I'd yeah, and then I'd go and
try to redirect the algorithm. I'd put a nipball and
I'd watch, you know, five videos about nipball, and then
I'd go back to the for you feed and just
over kind of a three day period, say, take something
like kittens. I think on the first day it was
sort of twelve percent kittens, and on the next day
it was three percent kittens, and on the last day
there were no kiddens, you know, at all, whereas disturbing

(01:09):
content rose, so that by day three, sixty five percent
of what was waiting for me in the full U feed,
you know, despite trying to redirect algorithm that was really
really flow on heavy content.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Is there not any responsibility from techtic or the social
media companies?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I mean you would think so, right. And someone
recently said to me after I did this experiment, and
you can actually hold on a video and you know,
an option will come up to say you're not interested.
And I thought, all, that's interesting. So I tried that
this morning. I put a mental health into the search
speed so that I knew it would start sending me
again traumatic kind of content. And then when that content
came up, I held on it and I said not interested.

(01:46):
And then about secting videos later, it showed me another clip,
so again I said not interested, and then again another
minute later. More so it's like, you know, they're saying,
we've got filters and we've got things that you can use,
but actually when you try to use them, and I
went online and just kind of read on online communities,
are other people finding this feature work? And everyone's just
like no when I say, I'm not interested, why is tiktokan?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, that is really refascinating because, as you also said
in there and the article I was reading as well,
you know, it's a lot for young brains to process
on TikTok because you're not really expecting some of the
stuff you're going from, like a lip sync video or funny,
and then all of a sudden something quiet falon comes
up and then yeah, it's a lot for adults to
even get the hit around.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, I mean it's emotionally confusing. You know, you see
something really heavy and then suddenly, like you say, it's
a lip sync video, So there's no time to mentally
processe what you what you've seen. And this is me
coming you know at it as an adult, I've got
like a whole lifetime I've experienced to draw on. I
know that I can, you know, shut it down and
go for a walk in the park and make myself
feel better. But I think it's just so much to

(02:47):
put on to young kids, and we know you know,
theoretically the legal ages do things, but we all know
so many kids that are on the platform for around
you know, age ten or eleven, and it's it's really frightening.
You know, So what does it do to empathy if
you're not actually your kind of brain's been trained not
to have time to reflect and have interfere around what
you're seeing.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Social media companies, you know, as you say it's age
thirteen for TikTok, they've got pretty clear guidelines and they
say they remove a lot of the videos, but it
sounds like there's a lot of it's still coming your way.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
No, and like you don't even have to put in
the last name to sign up to these platforms. You
put in one your first name, and you make up
an age and you're in. Like it's far too easy,
and obviously across the ditch in Australia, you know, it's
really encouraging to see that you know, their government are
going to bring in and it remains to be seeing
how it actually looks, but you know that they're raising
the legal age to sixteen, and I feel like that's

(03:36):
what we need to do here in New Zealand because
it's not for you to put it on Definitely not
for you to put on kids to monitor what they're doing.
And it's also not fair to put it on us
as parents. Kids have got a porcela in your pocket
to the digital world, and if you beside them every
minute of the day, you can't reasonably be expected to
protect them.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Do you think that.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Age limit will actually be effective? Yeah, well, there's a
great researcher in New Zealand doctor smet to marsh and
she says, look, probably not going to be one hundred
percent effective, but you know, doesn't mean we still shouldn't try,
you know, like it might be per.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, I guess too if it does become law, and
not that you need to be weak in your parenting,
but I think if you're like, oh, my mate to me,
he's on Instagram, he's allowed to do it. But then
if it's a law that gives appearance something to reference
to go, hey, this is law.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. This made the government dead cops,
not all us.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
As parents, right while even as adults, I think you
said it earlier, we can't even go Sometimes I pull
myself out of a whole thirty twenty five minutes just
scrolling looking at camp videos.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
And things best than the worst of humanity, all in
a quick scroll. Is that sometimes well Nadia makes a
really really fascinating your research out of christ Church. Thank
you so much for your time in your conversation this morning.