Why I’m Not on TikTok – Live Discussion!

Bismillah Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. While early he was so heavy on wala Samadhi come to everyone who is joining me, I don't do a lot of live sessions, but I'm trying to do more in the near future in sha Allah, a lot of the topics that I talk about, whether it be on my youtube or on my social media, I find that people usually have like, follow up questions, and clarification and some people want to present their point of view. So I figured a live discussion would be great, because we could basically get these questions out, you know, if you want some clarification on a topic, you can post your questions live in the chat here. You can just, you know,

say whatever you want, and I can see it and we can respond to it. And I can address these issues in real time in sha Allah. So I figured this is a good topic to start to start with because this is a question that I've gotten quite a lot. People have said to me, they said, Look, you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram. You're on let's see what else Twitter, Tumblr even. You're on most social media sites. How come you're not on Tik Tok? And recently someone even said to me,

you know, can I post your stuff on Tik Tok? And what it can be set on the lot to sad Cydia, a beautiful name Abdullah and while Zachman La Jolla for being here. Yeah, so someone said to me, you know, can I post your stuff on Tik Tok? And I was really thinking about this. And I was like, I need to really clarify and talk about why I'm not on Tik Tok. Usually, I'm in what they call an early adopter. Right? So even if y'all remember Snapchat, I don't know how many of you on Snapchat. Let me know in the comments. If you are on Snapchat, I am on Snapchat. I just don't really post much on Snapchat. But I was on I got on Snapchat. Very, very early. I mean, before most people were on

Snapchat, I got on Snapchat before companies started getting on Snapchat. And I was like, you know, make my snapchat public. And I can share, you know, short snaps, you know, 10 second snaps, and 100 I did quite well. And there's a lot of people who you know, are on Snapchat, and were following me. Some of you may remember that I was doing that on my bond. Reflections thought we have reflections on Snapchat. So normally, I'm a very early adopter. And I see we have someone here who said, you know, I had you on Snapchat from the start? Yeah, have dinner. So normally, I'm a very early adopter and I'm on board very quickly. And you know, tick tock when it when it happened. And actually,

interestingly enough, if you go online, if you go on Twitter, and I don't know how long ago, maybe a year a couple years ago, I don't know. You know, so I know exactly when tick tock started when it was just, you know, very new. I actually tweeted something I said, Yo, what's tick tock? What's going on with tick tock, and I got a bunch of responses from people on Twitter, you know, telling me like the pros and cons of tick tock or whatever, overwhelming. It was kind of negative. What people were saying about about tick tock on my, on on my Twitter, but anyway, I looked into it very early. And then quite early on, I made the decision not to be on tick tock and as I said, I still get this

question till today like you're on every other social media site here YouTube. Why are you not on Tik Tok? And so, I'm just going to mention a couple things about why I personally chose not to be on Tik Tok. First of all, I want to say that this is not one of those like halal or haram issues. So I'm not here to say that it is haram to be on Tik Tok because that would honestly apply to any social media platform. You know, it depends on what your what someone is doing on tick tock if you're doing haram stuff on tick tock, It's haram if you're doing Halal stuff on tick tock, it's it's headed same thing with YouTube same thing with Instagram. Same thing with any other social

media site, you know, it really depends on what a person is doing on there. So so I'm not here to say that, you know, it is it is haram to be on on Tik Tok. That's not my point here. Really, what what I do and I what I think a lot of public speakers and other students have knowledge and you know, people who want to put good content out there in the world, what they do, from my understanding, and I can say, at least for myself, what I do is, usually when it comes to these sites, I weigh the harms and benefits so for me, it's okay, what benefit can come out of this social media site? versus you know, what are the harms that come about it? And I think everyone kind of

makes their own decision about whether they want to be on that social media platform or not. And so for me, this is really what what it goes back to, for me that the harms of it don't outweigh the benefits that could happen because I get it you know, I'm

He will say like, look, you know, if you are on tick tock, you can just add good stuff. And, and actually that that creates a good alternative for people. So instead of people watching bad stuff on tick tock, they can watch good stuff. So you should put good stuff on tick tock, and I get that that's a totally fair thing to say. Absolutely. And there are a lot of people who do a lot of good stuff on tick tock, there's no denying that. But for me personally, as I said, it doesn't outweigh the harm that can come about it.

So what is the harm? Right? And so for me, one of the big differences between tick tock and other social media sites, why don't miss out on Mr. Sabrina? So one of the big issues really is the algorithm, right? The algorithm? So what is the problem with the algorithm? Well, the algorithm pretty much dictates what you're going to view on any social media platform, right? It analyzes what you're watching, and it gives you suggestions, and it kind of like steers you in one direction or the other. Same thing with Instagram. Same thing with Twitter, same thing with Facebook, you know, you squat, like we scroll up, and we see different things, but it's kind of geared towards. Well,

the goal really, of the algorithm is to get us hooked, is to keep is to spend as much time as possible on that social media platform. Because the more time we spend on there, obviously, the more money they make through advertising, and so on and so forth. So that's the goal. By the way, that's the goal of all social media platforms. The problem however, with with tick tock is that

it is it seems to be more dangerous and toxic than other social media platforms, because a lot of times a person can be viewing good stuff on there, but they will quickly end up viewing things that are not so good. So I know I came across one study that was done analysis found that first of all, one of the biggest demographics on so on tick tock are minors, so not even just young people, but people who are very young minors. And, you know, the TIC tock algorithm is so powerful, that, that even minors were driven to content that had things like sex and drugs and things like this. And, you know, it steered them towards that. So some, for me, this is the problem, right? Like, I could put

good stuff on there, and someone can be watching my stuff, and that's good. But then as they spend more time on there, the algorithm is so powerful that they may very well end up in stuff that is really bad for them, whether it's just straight up bad stuff, you know, like sex and, and, and, and drugs and intoxicants and things like that are things that are just bad for their self esteem, bad for their self worth, you know, comparing oneself to others and you know, other things that just makes a person feel bad about themselves or is bad for their mental health. And obviously, we know that even other social media platforms are bad for, you know, can be very bad detrimental to

especially young people's mental health. But Tik Tok seems to be the worst of them, right? And because the algorithm is so very, very powerful. And I have a couple times you know, I've been with some friends and they're like, why aren't you on Tik Tok? I'm gonna cause show me tick tock. And someone even recently has found a friend of mine said You know, you're not on tick tock, but you're actually on tick tock. I was like, What do you mean by that? And they said, people are posting your stuff on tick tock. And I was like, Well, I didn't know that. He said, here look, this is your your video someone posted on tick tock. And I said, Okay, show me and I looked at it. And then the next

video started automatically the next video started and then it started going to like other videos, and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, like, stop this. Like, now you can turn it off, but it's just gonna keep playing other stuff. And I'm like, wow, even my video can lead to something else and because that is so powerful. I made the decision to not post stuff on Tik Tok. And look, I get it right. Like, I totally get it. Some people say, you know, people are going to be on there anyway. Right? You're not stopping people from being on there. Then why not just give them a good alternative. Once again, it's not about the alternative. It's about me. If I were to get on if I were to officially

get on Tik Tok, right, and this is the difference here. There's a difference when somebody takes my video and they post it on Tik Tok. Even though I don't, I'm not for that, right? So if you ask my permission, I would be like No, don't post my video on Tik Tok. But if somebody does it, they does it whatever. Like I'm not going to go after them or anything like that. But there's a difference between that and then there's a difference between me officially being on tick tock because when I go on tick tock, if I were to go on tick tock and say here's my tick tock account. Without a doubt I will be driving people to a we bring people to tick tock with me. Same thing happened with Snapchat.

By the way, when I got on Snapchat, a bunch of people got on Snapchat because I was on Snapchat because they wanted to see my snapchat content happens with all social media sites, the sites and platforms and that's one of the harms, right? As I talked about earlier, weighing the harms and benefits that's just something that I have to deal with. But I don't want to so with with tick tock

I don't want to be a person who draws more people who are not already on Tik Tok, and the people that are already there. I think there's a lot there is good content on there anyway, if a person really is searching for good content, they'll get it. I just don't want to be part of the problem. And so that's why that's the big reason and there's other reasons as well, but that's, you know, that's the big reason why I personally, or you know, I'm not on Tik Tok.

So, yeah, but I want to, I want to know how you feel about it as well. I know, a couple people said something. Let me go ahead and read the commentary what it said, I'm not a fan of social media, but Tik Tok, specifically, specifically, is out of the user's control because 50% of its content depends on suggested and trending videos. Yeah. So things like that. Subhanallah that is, you know, so being a part of that it's really, it's a hard pill for me to swallow is difficult for me to justify something like that. And once again, I want to reiterate, I'm not saying it's haram or that you know, you're a bad Muslim. If you're on tick tock, really, it's not my place to judge, right?

Because as I said, it depends on what you're doing on tick tock. If you're doing Halal stuff, it's hard if you're doing haram stuff, it's how long, but it's just a personal choice that I've made for myself, just to look at why and for sharing that dark shadow. Said, agreed I feel instant is similar if you end up on search, but setting yourself honest parameters and subscribing to set content works. Yeah. So Instagram, I'll tell you what I do on my Instagram. First of all, my public Instagram, I don't follow anyone, okay? No, that's not true. Actually follow one account, I follow my clothing line. That's it. So I follow one account, that means I'm only going on Instagram to post

so on a personal level, I'm not going to be looking at stuff on Instagram, on my on my other Instagram, my private, private Instagram, which is just for my family, on that I am very careful about who I follow. And even that,

if I want to, if I want to go look at something, generally, I'll go look at a person's page and look over there. So I will try my best. And it's not always possible, but I will try my best to avoid the endless scrolling, right, where you keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Because, you know, a lot of times a lot of those images that we see even on Instagram, they're not people that we subscribe to, or people that we follow. It's people that are just suggested to us. So if I want to so to counter that if I want to look at something, I'll go click on somebody's profile and look at what they're posting, if there's some benefits or something like that, or a family member, I'll go

look at their profile and see what they posted. That's a better way. So that's how I get around that on Instagram. So I'd said similar to YouTube, where a strong Islamic content present has now been established. Yeah, yeah, exactly. YouTube. Someone said okay, there are several do out scholars on there perhaps if you join, there can be shift on tide in Islamic content. i Okay, so I get that argument. And then I guess the second part of your comment was similar to YouTube where strong stomach contact presence has now been established. I get that.

I don't know. I just I'm not comfortable with it. I'm not comfortable cuz it would really, I don't know if we have enough people who are willing to be on Tik Tok in the first place. I know a lot of the younger crowd is willing to be on the tick tock is willing to be on tick tock, I sound like an uncle that tick tock, right.

I know a lot of the younger younger speakers are willing to be on tick tock, and that's fine. But I don't think the younger speakers aren't enough. Because to me,

even on YouTube, right? You know, I'm not here to really bash YouTube or talk about the problems of YouTube, one of the problems of YouTube is that there are many speakers on YouTube, we're actually just not qualified, right? They're not scholars, they're not even students of knowledge. They are not even people who have studied properly anywhere. But they're popular on YouTube. And that is really a problematic situation that we now live in, in a society where we think anyone who is popular is automatically trustworthy, or they're automatically credible, or they're automatically qualified, which is not the case. And that's something that YouTube has definitely contributed to

their people who have like huge, not a huge number of subscribers on YouTube. And they really in terms of their Islamic credentials, in terms of their Islamic knowledge, they have no credentials, but people take them as sources of knowledge, and that is problematic. So if we have like, real deal scholars that are getting on tick tock, and like I could help with that, then then I would, but I don't I don't know if we're there yet. Allah, I don't know. Perhaps I can revisit this. We can revisit this issue in a year or so. And we have like some proper people of knowledge who are getting on tick tock, that would be great. A lot of times people send me videos of tick tock influencers.

And I don't want to generalize here right. I don't want to say everybody, but the few people that I have come across on tick tock

People that have been sent to me like, hey, check out this person. This is what they're saying. And I'm like, Who is this? It's a tick tock influencer. Well, you look at the Tick Tock influencer. They really have no qualification in the deen they have no qualification they they are not qualified. They don't have they haven't studied anywhere. They haven't studied with any credible scholars, they haven't studied any credible institution where their knowledge could, you could say it's credible. A lot of times just people who have self studied or people who have, you know, just looked up things online. And that's why I always cringe when I hear someone say, well, in my opinion, such and such

thing as halal, or in my opinion, and I'm like, Okay, that's cool. But who are you? Right? You can say, in my opinion, if you're a scholar, even a student of knowledge, right, even somebody who's studied properly, okay, you say my opinion because they're basing their their opinion upon knowledge upon evidence. But if it's just somebody who just looked up stuff on their own, came to their conclusion. I mean, I don't want to contribute to people taking knowledge from those who are not qualified. May Allah protect us? Okay. Pooja said Insta is also time wasting. Sometimes you find some something informative and useful, but you end up checking other things and waste your time,

isn't it? Yeah, I agree. I agree. And that's why I think even on Instagram, we should be, we should be careful, right? Number one, who we follow on Instagram. And number two, how much time we're spending on Instagram and really like taking a look at? Well, the time that I'm spending on Instagram, like, am I looking at stuff that is actually beneficial? Or stuff that is actually harmful? There's stuff like, don't get me wrong, there's stuff on Instagram and other social media site that isn't beneficial, but at the same time, it's not harmful. It's like neutral stuff. And I don't really have a problem with that, to be honest, if you're looking at neutral things, then

that's okay. All right, at least you're not doing something which is haram. And you know, we all Allah has created us with, you know, the need to be entertained and to have fun. And so someone's looking at something which isn't Haram is just like neutral, something which allowed them then that's fine as long as it's not going overboard. But we do need to be careful even even with instant, like I said, it's not just tick tock but tick tock seems to be

probably the most severe in this matter. But yeah, and so Sabrina said tick tock is toxic. Like I said, I'm not personally on tick tock, and I don't plan on being a tick tock, if anything else, you know, if any, unless anything else changes. And I was hoping we'd have somebody here today who would try to convince me otherwise, I want to hear some some arguments on the opposing side. But I don't know if we have that many people. But Hamdulillah. So that's, that's it. And I want to do more of these live sessions because I like hearing from you and I like having these discussions online. I think a lot of my social media does tend to be one sided.

I don't really get into comments and respond to comments, and I'm going to address that in another live session. Inshallah, why? I don't respond to comments online. There's a very specific reason for that. I'm going to get into that system as thorough says, what would your thoughts be on the idea of posting content on Tik Tok that isn't related to Islam, for example, to advertise your clothing line?

Okay, if you say if you if by your clothing line, you mean my clothing line? I personally wouldn't do it for the same reason. As I'm not posting assignment content on tick tock. As for other people, advertising, Allah, Allah, I don't know. And as I said, for me, this is not a halal and haram issue. This is an issue of weighing the harms and benefits. And we have to really think about the impact that we're having. And this is something that I hope we can all just, you know, personally really think about.

So, so I personally, I don't advertise my clothing line on Tik Tok. I didn't even I didn't even consider it until now. So Pamela is very interesting. I never even thought about doing that. Perhaps it would be,

you know, a good way to advertise. But I don't once again, the same reason that I wouldn't post Islamic content on there is the same reason why I wouldn't I wouldn't advertise my clothing line on there a lot.

Yeah.

opposing argument, people are leaving Islam, a small reminder can be imagining Absolutely. And look, like I said, I'm not here to say there's no good that can come off of come out of tic toc. And that's not my point here. I think one of the problems here, and I think the problem that we're dealing with the problem that we're dealing with today is people tend to look at everything, black and white, right? Just good or bad. People tend to look at things in absolutes, meaning something is either just completely good or completely bad, you know, good or evil. And, you know, life is not that clear cut a lot of times, you know, these issues are not clear cut issues. These are issues

where, you know, it's it's it's a spectrum between good and bad. And oftentimes we take these very harsh stances towards a lot of these matters where, you know, I look I get being harsh and being absolutely

On a personal level, right So even for me personally I am I think I'm harsh. I am I am staunch, but that's for myself. Personally being on Tik Tok. I wouldn't go at other people and say, Hey, It's haram for you to be on Tik Tok because all these problems, once again, that's taking a very staunch approach on this issue. When when there is the other side of yeah, there may be people who may be benefiting from Tik Tok, right, there may be people who are listening to these quick reminders and their benefit. It's not really for me to say what reminders beneficial and I've actually started, those of you are following me on YouTube and even on on

on Instagram, I started doing these one minute

reminders, right, because I know like attention span these days is, you know, it's our intention. Our attention, man is just so small now how to love

but the YouTube shorts, right? And I'm doing that for the very reason that look, sometimes people just want to watch something really quick, you know, it's under 60 seconds. And it perhaps it could be a reminder that actually helps them. And even for me, I for myself, always giving reminders to others is always a reminder for myself as well. And I personally benefit from that's why that's why I do those reminders, but But yeah, exactly luck, luck, luck had had the luck. And so thank you so much. For everyone who joined me today. Like I said, I do want to do more of these. And hopefully I can do if you enjoyed it, let me know. And if you if you

if you want to see more of these, let me know as well. And if you want to see more of these, share this with others, I'm going to post this on my YouTube channel. Hopefully there's a recording of this and you know, I can post it, and other people can benefit from it as well from these live sessions. But definitely share it with others inshallah Tada. And I do want to do more. I think my next live session is going to be why I don't respond to comments online. And like I said, I do have a very specific reason. And why I don't do DMS right. I don't do DMS on any of my social media platform.

But But yeah, so we'll discuss that in shuttler in the next live session. I don't know when maybe next Sunday I'm not I'm not decided on time yet. If you have a time that you think works best for you maybe suggested in the comments after this video gets posted. I'm going to go back and as I said I'm gonna post this live session on my YouTube channel to check it out as well. Once again just come along to everyone same time I'm going to try for the same time but I want to see what time works best for people

you know abdulrasheed said he's from India so India I know it's quite late here in India right now. So whatever time you know works best for you. We'll try to work for that for me it's 2pm 2:30pm but I know I have people who listen to me from the subcontinent India Pakistan and people all the way in you know Malaysia Indonesia UK. As you know we have travel lover handler here from the UK obviously people in North America as well so whatever time can work best. Lebanon we have wild from Lebanon and Masha Allah attending from from Lebanon as well that's that's beautiful. handler Jacqueline Lochhead. Good to have all of you here. We'll work out a time and we'll we'll we'll do this again in

sha Allah this was fun for me I enjoyed it, and hopefully some benefit came out of it as well. And Zachman la Hara take care of set Ahmad Aiko Muhammad Allah he will Rakata