Information Cascades in Tiktok Challenges
An information cascade is a process in which individuals in a group make decisions based on the decisions of others in the group, without fully considering all the options or information available. Information cascades can lead to suboptimal outcomes because they can prevent individuals from considering all the information that is relevant to their decision.
Information cascades can occur in multiple areas, such as social media. For example, individuals may decide to like or share a piece of content on social media based on the fact that others have liked or shared it. This can lead to the content going viral, even if it is not necessarily high-quality content.
An interesting example of this are Tiktok challenges, some challenges are for fun and more people get drawn into joining when they see that multiple people are taking part of the challenge. The more people who participate in a challenge, the more drawn a person is to join the challenge. However, some of these challenges are dangerous. Recently, there has been a challenge to tape your mouth shut to help you fall asleep. I have personally seen these types of videos multiple times and I thought it was quite bizarre but I didn’t think it would be dangerous. However, mouth taping can be quite dangerous if you have sleep apnea because it can make it difficult to breathe. Mouth taping can also lead to damaging soft tissues around the mouth. Although there are health concerns surrounding the challenge, I never saw any of these published online. Most of the videos are promoting it and never discuss the negative effects of the challenge. Thus, information cascades can be extremely dangerous because individual rationality is disregarded. An information cascade can happen in the following steps: person A creates a video on the benefits of mouth taping -> person B views the video and engages with it (likes and comments), person C engages with the video as well and sends it to friend D. Person D views the video and decides to try the trend.
Some Tiktok challenges are much more dangerous than mouth taping, there have been multiple reports of children or teens dying because of a Tiktok trend. Most recently, 4 teens died in Buffalo New York because of a “Honda Challenge,” where you steal a Honda and purposefully crash it. Information cascades can be extremely dangerous because individuals no longer think rationally when they make decisions. They base their decisions on other people’s actions.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/health/mouth-taping-tiktok-dangers-sleep-wellness/index.html