When TikTok Becomes Reality: The Risk of a Society That Believes Everything That Appears on the Screen

Every era has had its urban legends, its uncontrolled rumors, and its stories told as if they were true without actually being so. The difference is that once upon a time, a rumor took days, weeks, or months to spread. Today, it can reach millions of people in a matter of hours, accompanied by images, music, subtitles, outraged comments, and thousands of shares that end up lending it the appearance of credibility. In the title, we used TikTok as an example social media platform, but the situation concerns everyone else as well.

This is where one of the most underestimated problems of our society arises: the progressive confusion between what happens on social media and what actually happens.

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms are extraordinary tools. They allow us to communicate, share experiences, document events, and get to know people and realities that would otherwise remain distant. The problem arises when they stop being considered tools and become, in the perception of some users, a sort of automatic dispenser of truth.

A video appears on the screen. A person confidently recounts something. It has thousands of views. In the comments, someone writes: "It happened to me too." Another adds: "I knew it." A third claims to personally know someone involved.

And now an unverified story begins to transform, in the mind of the beholder, into fact.

No documents are needed. No corroboration is needed. You don't need to know who's speaking. You don't even need to ask yourself whether that person actually witnessed what they're describing.

It's on screen, so it must be real.

And this is precisely the most dangerous step.

The comment has become a source

There's something even more surprising than the success of unverified videos: the value placed on comments.

Under any content, you can find all sorts of claims. Anonymous people recount incidents, make accusations, formulate diagnoses, explain laws, reconstruct legal proceedings, point to culprits, and offer certainties.

And often, it's enough for a sentence to receive a few hundred "likes" for it to be perceived as confirmed.

But a hundred people endorsing a false statement doesn't make it true.

A thousand comments are not journalistic verification.

A million views is not proof.

It's a seemingly elementary concept, yet it seems to become less obvious every day.

The unknown who becomes more credible than an editorial team

Then there is a particularly interesting paradox.

A segment of the public is increasingly wary of newspapers, television stations, institutions, and information professionals. This wariness, to a certain extent, is even healthy: no source should be considered infallible, and journalism, too, must be subject to criticism, scrutiny, and accountability.

But at the same time, the same person can place almost complete trust in a stranger who randomly appears in their feed.

It's a huge contradiction.

A news program is accused of having vested interests, directors, editors, editorial lines, and responsibilities. All true, and all legitimately questionable.

But a girl who records a video from her car claiming that children are being “kidnapped” in a popular shopping mall can be believed without anyone knowing who she is, where she got the information, what evidence she has, or whether the incident ever actually happened.

Not because it proved anything.

Simply because it seems sincere.

The problem is that perceived sincerity is not proof.

A person can say something in perfect good faith and yet be completely wrong. They may have misinterpreted an event. They may have received false information. They may have mistaken a coincidence for confirmation.

Or he can just make it up.

Algorithms cannot distinguish true from false.

Furthermore, the social network was not created to establish what is true.

Its algorithm must primarily understand what keeps the user in front of the screen.

A moderate, complex, and nuanced news story often carries less weight than a shocking statement.

“We still don’t know what happened” rarely goes viral.

“WARNING, IT’S HAPPENING EVERYWHERE” has a much better chance.

Fear generates attention. Outrage generates comments. Scandal generates shares. Anger prolongs the platform.

And so a system designed to maximize engagement can end up unintentionally rewarding the most extreme content.

The result is a distorted reality.

Those who spend a lot of time within this flow may begin to perceive phenomena that are once very rare as frequent, marginal behaviors as prevalent, and isolated episodes as national emergencies.

A society emotionally governed by things that do not exist

This is probably the most disturbing aspect.

If a person believes a fake news story, the problem might seem limited to misinformation.

But what happens when that news produces real emotions?

The fear is real. The anger is real. The hatred is real. The decision to no longer frequent a place is real. The accusation leveled against an innocent person is real. The ruined reputation is real. The aggression towards a category is real.

The story that started it all, however, may not have been.

This means we can arrive at the paradox of a society in which real people modify their behavior based on non-existent events.

You get angry over something that didn't happen. You're afraid of someone who didn't do anything. You judge someone you don't know. You condemn someone without evidence. You build political, social, and even health-related beliefs based on a thirty-second video.

This is no longer simply "believing in hoaxes."

It is a progressive alteration of the relationship with reality.

The problem is not social media

It would be too simple, and probably wrong, to conclude that the problem lies with TikTok or other social networks.

Platforms amplify a much older human behavior: we are naturally drawn to stories, especially when they confirm what we already think or when they evoke strong emotions.

Technology, however, has almost completely eliminated the distance between the voice and the audience.

Today, everyone has a potential television station in their pocket.

And it is an extraordinary conquest of freedom.

But a society in which everyone can speak needs, perhaps more than in the past, citizens capable of listening critically.

Freedom to communicate cannot function without the ability to verify.

Teaching doubt

The solution is not to censor all questionable content, nor to give anyone absolute power to decide what is true.

The main solution should be cultural.

We need to go back to teaching something apparently simple: before believing, verify.

Who is speaking? What is the original source? Is there any other independent evidence? Is the story reported by reliable sources? Are there any official statements? Does the video actually show what is being said, or are they just images with added narration? Does the commenter have verifiable information, or are they simply repeating what they've read elsewhere?

These are trivial questions. But today they can represent a fundamental form of self-defense.

Doubt as a form of intelligence

Having doubts isn't a weakness. It's a form of intelligence.

"Do you have any doubts? I have no doubts about having doubts."

That's precisely the point. Doubt doesn't mean knowing nothing, but refusing to turn every impression into certainty. It means giving yourself time to verify, listen to other versions, seek confirmation, and even accept the possibility of being wrong.

Ultimately, as Luciano De Crescenzo reminded us, we should be wary of those who flaunt absolute certainties in life. Because those who are truly willing to understand the world rarely stop asking questions.

Ignoring the phenomenon would be a mistake

Dismissing everything with the usual phrase "people have always believed nonsense" risks profoundly underestimating the change that has taken place.

Yes, credulity has always existed. Urban legends have always existed. False information has always existed.

But they have never had a distribution machine capable of reaching millions of people in a few minutes, automatically selecting the users most likely to react to that content.

This is the news.

And when the level of gullibility begins to influence collective behaviors, social relationships, reputations, fears, and decisions, ignoring it means accepting that the problem will grow.

There's no need to be afraid of social media.

We must fear a society that ceases to distinguish between testimony and evidence, between opinion and fact, between popularity and truth.

Because the internet can show us the world. But if we lose the habit of doubting and verifying what we see, it can also construct a completely nonexistent world for us.