Authorities in neighboring Albania blocked access to Tik Tok for a year on December 21, in order to "increase physical and digital security in schools and the impact that social media and children's engagement bring."
This was done after a nine-year-old primary school student in the center of Tirana was stabbed by his peer in November. After his murder, videos circulated on Tik Tokom where minors confessed to the murder.
Certain opposition leaders in Albania as well as some non-governmental organizations criticized the shutdown of Tik Tok, considering that move a direct attack on freedom of speech and a dangerous precedent. Tik Tok has already been partially or completely banned in at least 20 countries over fears of inappropriate content or security risks associated with the platform's Chinese owner ByteDance and its closeness to the Chinese government.
Should Montenegro ban that social network? Especially considering that there have been cases of children getting hurt after watching various videos on Tik Tok, such as "Flying Superman".
Should we wait for something to happen like in Albania or react sooner?
At this moment, we should not think about banning the Tik Tok social network in Montenegro, but we should devote ourselves more intensively to familiarizing ourselves with and harmonizing with international legislation so that we can adequately apply certain provisions through Montenegrin legislation, our interlocutors agree.
These provisions are primarily contained in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Disputable content should be removed in cooperation with the platforms
The Ministry of Culture and Media unofficially said that their idea is not to completely ban Tik Tok and any other social network, because "tomorrow" a new one will appear. From that department, they announce the implementation of procedures that will mean effective communication in order to remove harmful, illegal and disputed content.
"The point is, and this is what is foreseen in the Media Strategy, to develop communication with social platforms, to have an authorized institution that will be in official communication with large online platforms in order to solve all problems that arise in direct communication. We definitely need an effective mechanism that will help us ensure that all illegal content, in the sense of disinformation or content that can have far-reaching negative consequences, must be removed in communication with social networks," the ministry said unofficially.
The Ministry of Culture and Media unofficially said that in the next two years, Montenegro will have to incorporate a new EU provision - the Act on Digital Services (DSA), which foresees cooperation with social networks.
"Social networks will have to assume certain obligations and are obliged to adjust the content based on communication with member countries, through national coordinators, that is, to remove everything that is considered illegal and controversial content from the platform. This means that if something appears on Tik Tok, which is disputed from a legal point of view, EU member states react. They will have their own national coordinators who will resolve mutual problems through contact persons who must have social platforms," the ministry said.
Professor at the University of Montenegro, Vuk Vuković points out that regulation in Montenegro is a challenging topic not only for the internet and social media, but also for the press, radio and television, which shows how ready we are to overcome the media challenges that lie ahead. to us.
"TikTok protects itself through certain age limits for opening profiles and consuming content, but the fact is that even those under the age of 13 have accounts - and that is precisely why it is a systemic family issue, that is, the issue of family upbringing and education, because monitoring and control tools contents exist", said Vuković.
"Moral panic is not one of them," he points out.
Justified and unjustified panic
In Montenegro, in May 2023, a petition "Ban Tik Tok" was launched through the parliamentary service, which collected over 60 signatures within 6.000 days, which is a condition for it to be considered.
"This platform has an extremely bad effect on our children and youth because it shows inappropriate content to a huge number of people. The same content is created by our youngest in the hope that it will become popular, which is one of the wrong values that is promoted on this platform - popularity. Children should live children's lives, have childhood, enjoy every day of their lives, and not be 'popular' and have role models who cannot teach them anything," the petition states.
However, even after a year and a half, the parliamentary Legislative Committee still has not considered this petition. The committee should decide how to formalize the citizens' initiative, which would lead to a bill or a consultative and control hearing. However, legal procedures do not regulate the time limits in which authorities should respond to initiatives.
Vuković points out that each medium carries certain challenges and that these challenges differ in relation to the language of the medium itself, including the so-called new media.
"TikTok, as the fastest growing social media, has been producing both justified and unjustified panic since 2017," he says.
"Unjustified panic - sometimes in the domain of morality, and more often in the domain of moralizing - is most often present through aggressive resistance to new media, including new social platforms, but it is a historical category, from radio, through television, to various modern means of communication. However, we should not ignore what, in my opinion, is justified caution when it comes to Tik Tok, namely: one-dimensional and superficial content imposed by the algorithm itself, which forces easy-to-consume sensationalism, but also the exploitation of vulnerabilities," he said. Vuković.
These elements are especially worrying when it comes to younger users, because, as Vuković states, they often have underdeveloped or insufficiently developed certain aspects of personality and resistance strategies, which easily fall into psychosocial problems, such as the normalization of superficial values, distorted perception of reality, group pressure and social imitation or erosion of attention.
He adds that in such a context, the circumstances concerning the so-called TikTok challenges, and in previous years there were a number of them: Blackout Challenge, Devious Lick Challenge, Fire Challenge, Salt and Ice Challenge, and in our area the Blue Whale challenge was especially talked about.
The Police Directorate recently pointed out the emergence of a globally popular TikTok trend called "Flying Superman", which was also recorded in the countries of the region. It is a phenomenon that causes concern due to potentially dangerous and even far-reaching health consequences. The police warned that although it seems like a harmless form of entertainment - an imitation of Superman's flight, the presence of this challenge confirms that the desire to be "trendy" on social networks is an incentive for risky behavior. The Police Administration appealed to parents to talk with their children about the dangers, violence and self-destructive behavior that encourages the aforementioned challenge, as well as all other similar activities on social networks.
The Police Administration did not respond to the question of whether they had recorded any kind of incident related to the trends of "TikTok challenges", which include minor or serious physical injuries.
Vuković states that Tik Tok challenges flirt with very risky and self-destructive methods of behavior, socially unacceptable, which is most often the result of peer pressure and the desire for attention.
"However, it should be borne in mind that similar challenges existed on other social media (e.g. Facebook or Instagram), but TikTok turned out to be a more fertile ground for viral trends, precisely because of the specific means of expression and production context. "Dynamicity, emphasis on short videos that quickly catch attention, musical popularity, spectacularity and sensationalism - these are just some of the elements why TikTok is more 'successful' in the attention market," Vuković said.
Adapt media literacy to digital trends
Explaining the role of media literacy in remediating the harmful consequences of social media, Vuković points out that the programs, projects and topics of media literacy in Montenegro are too traditional or even outdated, and therefore unusable in overcoming the problems we are facing.
"Of course, traditional topics are also important and should be discussed, but we must look at them in a new context: digital media, artificial intelligence, new generations of the web... Critical thinking, as the most important goal of media literacy, should be based on knowledge , which means that it is preceded by certain skills and abilities that need to be mastered in order to be able to critically grasp the occurrences and phenomena of contemporary media culture," he stated.
Students in grades VII, VIII or IX of primary schools in Montenegro will study media literacy as an elective subject starting in the 2023/2024 school year.
Vuković adds that interactive workshops, peer-to-peer and transgenerational education are just some of the methods that must be included in media literacy programs in Montenegro and cites a concrete example.
"If adults are there to teach younger users how to understand or deconstruct media messages, I'm sure younger users could teach adults how to use Tik Tok." It would be interesting to see how many of those who are very ready to criticize Tik Tok or those who teach media literacy, even know how it works in practice, how many have used it - not to have fun, but to get to know it. Finally, topics from the field of digital and media literacy should be integrated into other subjects as well, such as computer science, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, literature, etc., Vuković concluded.
This text was made with the financial support of the National Endowment for Democracy. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and publishers of the Media Institute of Montenegro and does not necessarily reflect the views of the donors.
Bonus video:
