How TBH is enforcing bad social dynamics
Right now the new social app TBH is all the rage. The core concept is that the teenagers are asked to provide positive and anonymous feedback to their friends.
All questions in the app are positively worded, and each time the user is presented with 4 random of their friends to pick from.
On the surface, this concept is a fresh alternative to other anonymous communication apps like Yik Yak that within seconds turn into a mean spirited and discriminating place.
TBH writes on their website that:
“Unlike other anonymous apps, all the feedback is positive. […] To be honest, we love our members and we only want the best for them.”
but their approach is not necessarily best for their users. There are two ways in which the approach TBH is taking is flawed.
Gems are likes, and no-likes is negative
The most obvious critique of TBH is the “gem-mechanic”. Every time one of your friends pick you as the winner of four in a category, you are awarded a gem. Since all questions are positive, being picked is implicitly a positive thing, and thus gems become a token of popularity.
While kids will not directly write mean comments to each other, the lack of gems will equate unpopularity — in the same way that few or no matches on Tinder is a tough thing to swallow for adults.
Gems intuitively seem like an obvious trojan horse in the app to introduce monetisation. They can be used as currency for in-app purchases, and can be bought with cool cash by the unpopular kids instead of likes (how is that for a social dynamic?).
Teaching kids to crave and expect positive feedback
But the more problematic part of TBH is that it is reinforcing an already existing and unhealthy behaviour between young people of constantly expecting and craving positive feedback from their peers. When looking at the Facebook walls of teenagers, an obscure pattern quickly emerges. They post a picture of themselves, and 10’s or 100’s of their friends immediately rushes in to tell them that they are the most beautiful person in the world (if you want to see this with your own eyes, try to find a young girl on your Facebook friend list and look at the comments from the last time they changed their profile picture).
Once teenagers receive this kind of positive attention, or when they see it directed towards their friends, then it slowly becomes something they crave. Any post with less likes than the last is a failure, and they start polishing their social profiles in an attempt to hunt as many likes as possible.
Not everyone is a super model, not every lunch is a Michelin starred meal and not everyone is “the best catch in school”. But that should not matter. Teaching teenagers to expect constant praise is as dangerous as exposing them to harsh comments.
