Have you heard of TikTok?

It’s an app that can be downloaded onto a smartphone. Users sign up with a handle, create an account, follow other users, and post and share video clips. You’ll often find people in TikToks dancing, lip syncing, or telling a story to the camera (in selfie mode).

TikTok is used mainly by the younger members of society, with most users currently falling into the age range of 13 to 40. TikTok has about 1 billion monthly active users worldwide (154 countries), with 100 million of them in the United States(source).

That’s a lotta people, people!

Unlike Twitter and Facebook users who rely mainly on photo posts, typed language, and emoji, TikTok users rely on audio and video images to communicate with viewers.

TikTok has become a popular place to share stories that have shock value.

A NEW TikTok trend with a high shock value?

sharing results of consumer DNA tests

In some of these videos, information that some might consider private family business, such as a discovery of misattributed parentage (a.k.a. an “NPE” discovery) is being shared with millions of viewers. And these videos are going viral.

What’s a hashtag and why does it matter?

A hashtag is a term that social media users identify to group and categorize similar content. You can search for #cake and find millions of videos of people talking about cake, eating cake, baking, and decorating cakes. For most words or phrases you can think of, there is a hashtag connecting to a TikTok on that topic.

There are sometimes only a few dozen videos posted for any given phrase or word, but those few videos can accumulate thousands to millions of views. Here’s an example of a few hashtags in the world of DNA that have caught the attention of TikTok users.

These numbers are current as of March 12, 2021.

• #23andMe has 86.6 million views.

• #Ancestry has 144.4 million views

• #AncestryDNA is 83.7 million views

• #MyHeritage is 346.7 million views

What is of note to those who are familiar with consumer testing is that MyHeritage is not the largest company based on the number of DNA kits sold, but they are by far the company gaining the most attention on TikTok.

Deep nostaliga by the digital genealogy company MyHeritage

The recent surge in MyHeritage TikToks trending (meaning, lots of views leading to a rise in hashtag numbers) seems to be attributable to a recent release of a feature on their site called “deep nostalgia.”

This tool allows you to convert a still photograph of a person into a short animated clip. Users of deep nostalgia have “brought back to life” ancestors they have never met, have animated younger versions of the people in their life, and have used it on images of family members who have died.

What is unclear (because this trend is too new to have been studied) is the psychological impact of such a tool. Is it healing? Triggering? Does someone need to be forewarned of what they will see (in ethical terms, informed consent)? Many of the TikToks you can watch show a person being caught off guard, having a phone pushed into their face, and watching an animation of someone they lost in the past.

Here are a few quotes I have read in online groups about it:

“I have to say it really was amazing but initially I felt very upset. It brought [my son] back to ‘life’ for a moment which was quite disconcerting. It reminded me how much of his life has been lost. “

“How many of you have actually looked at your own photos with this app? Because honestly, I did it and it didn't look at all like me.”

“I watched a tik tok of a man showing his parents the photos of their own parents, and they both broke down in tears. It was beautiful. I’m guessing it’s less creepy if you know them?”

Like so many new technologies that arise that have the power to elicit psychological reactions in people, we do not know what impact TikTok, MyHeritage’s deep nostalgia, consumer DNA testing, and other applications will have on the world as a whole.

It’s also unclear what type of support is available to those for whom the reaction is deeply unsettling or destabilizing to their sense of identity, relationships, and emotional equilibrium.

ARE YOU A TIKTOK USER? WHAT ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES OF USING THE SITE? WHAT ABOUT THE DEEP NOSTALGIA TOOL OFFERED BY MYHERITAGE? REPLY IN COMMENTS BELOW.

Acknowledgments go out to Betty Cohn, MBE for her assistance with research and hashtag analysis for this post.