TikTok new feature “Digital Well-Being”
TikTok has launched a new feature known as “Well-Being Missions”, aimed at encouraging users to cultivate more balanced digital habits, while paradoxically increasing app usage.
This feature incorporates brief, interactive games and digital badges to incentivize users for engaging in activities that foster mindfulness, as earning badges is perceived to be more beneficial than stepping away from the phone screen.
The Well-Being Missions commence with tasks that familiarize users with TikTok’s Digital Well-Being tools, including insights on screen time and reminders for activity. In the upcoming months, TikTok intends to introduce breathing exercises, soothing audio tracks, and further missions designed to assist users in pausing and reflecting during their app interactions.
Although this feature is marketed as a “digital health initiative”, the gamified approach keeps users engaged within the app, indicating that it merely pretends to offer assistance while actually increasing user engagement under the guise of “mindfulness”, rather than genuinely reducing screen time.
TikTok has reported that approximately 40% of users who came across the entry point for Well-Being Missions opted to investigate the feature, even in the absence of in-app promotion.
The recent strategy follows TikTok’s reduction or substitution of several conventional digital well-being functionalities, including explicit screen time management tools. Rather than encouraging users to disengage completely, the platform now emphasizes in-app engagements to sustain user focus while fostering a feeling of autonomy.
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