TikTok junkies are in for a painful biology lesson.
The controversial app’s imminent removal over Chinese spying concerns — possibly as soon as 12:01 a.m. Sunday — could spark serious physical and psychological withdrawal among serial scrollers, doctors told The Post.
“The universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance are extreme anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression and cravings – and people who are addicted to TikTok, if they stop using it abruptly, may experience any or all of these symptoms,” said Stanford psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke.
Lembke, who specializes in addiction medicine, also warned of mood swings, panic attacks and dysphoria – a profound negative mood – that could plague TikTok’s faithful after the app’s removal.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court unanimously voted to uphold a law that will ban the social media app nationwide unless the Beijing-based company, ByteDance, sells it to a US-approved buyer.
Without TikTok as a vice, levels of dopamine — a chemical that’s released in the brain when a person does something enjoyable, creating the urge to do it again — will begin to plummet, according to Dr. Victoria Dunckley, author of “Reset Your Child’s Brain.”
With every mind-numbing scroll, users are bombarded with a relentless stream of short videos ranging from dance challenges and make-up tutorials to melodramatic confessionals and absurd stunts.
Desperate TikTokers have been flooding the platform with tearful posts and dramatic pleas – with one user wailing about their “life falling apart.”
“It’s really not fair that, like, they’re banning TikTok, and I know that’s dramatic as hell that I’m crying,” a TikToker named Inzlay said in a Thursday video with tears streaming down her face. “I know it sounds dramatic to say I don’t know what I’m gonna do without TikTok, but like, bro, I really don’t know who I’m gonna be without TikTok.”
Spencer Wuah raged in a video with 3.2 million views that “nobody gives a f–k about China having our data.
“I will take a flight and go in person and hand-deliver Xi Jinping all my personal information, starting with a copy of my birth certificate and ending with a copy of my social security number,” he added.
Dunckley, a child psychiatrist, explained that “TikTok is really a stimulation addiction, so to not have that constant dopamine input people get from scrolling, they may feel listless, like they don’t know what to do with themselves, and they could physically feel tired, like they’re crashing from that lack of stimulation input.”
They will also suffer a hit to their egos.
“If someone is really psychologically entrenched in TikTok, they also might feel lost, and like their ego has been fractured, because the app kind of created a scaffolding around their persona, and formed the ways they think and live and interact,” Dunckley told The Post.
But if they can prevail through the withdrawal symptoms – which typically persist for up to two weeks – there will be light on the other side of the tunnel, she pointed out.
“Once those dopamine receptors aren’t getting hit so hard, they can re-sensitize and then respond in a more natural, healthy way, which will allow the person to get dopamine naturally rather than it just being hit so hard, over and over again, by TikTok videos,” Dunckley said.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Blotckey, on the other hand, expressed disbelief that TikTok junkies will quit cold turkey.
“If you’re addicted to alcohol and you stop drinking, sometimes those people will then develop addictions to gambling or pornography or some other vice,” said Blotckey.
“There are so many other social media possibilities out there, I think people who are so obsessed with TikTok now will likely seek out other social media platforms where their addiction can take hold,” he said.
