Is TikTok tinkering with my brain?

Social media apps like TikTok are designed in a way to get us hooked. The longer we use an app, the more data about us is collected and sold to advertisers, and this means more profit for social media companies. Examining this phenomenon, this talk discusses how the design of these apps, their linguistic and semiotic features, and their algorithms, shape not only our online behaviour, but also our thoughts and emotions. There is a reason Tiktok is addicting, and one way to understand this is how language works in the digital age, in its many different forms.

Professor Ron Darvin of CUHK English Department does research on issues of language and technology use, and teaches the applied English linguistics courses, “Digital literacy as social practice” and “Digital technologies for language learning.”