My kids and others are talking about the new face of social apps, and boy is it concerning. We know how immensely popular TikTok has become, which uses the model of having one short, entertaining video right after another from people you follow and from the most popular ones on the platform. This algorithm is designed precisely for your liking, which has made it so successful and engaging.

My son came into the kitchen the other day and exclaimed, "Mom, you have to write about this for TTT: Snapchat just announced something they call 'Spotlight,' and Instagram has 'Reels,' which it started recently."

Both these platforms are meant to grab the TikTok audience. Snapchat's Spotlight incentifies people into submitting their videos by promising to give away $1 million to top creators daily. Instagram Reels differentiates itself from TikTok by limiting videos to 30 seconds versus TikTok's maximum of one minute. Instagram already takes so much of the social media time-space that adding Reels gives them a chance to extend their audience's time, hoping they will stay there rather than leave to check in with TikTok.

Youth tell me repeatedly how they have never experienced time getting away from them as much as when they are on TikTok. There, they may spend two hours and be shocked that so much time passed because it felt more like just 20 minutes.

One college Freshman recently told me that he has never downloaded TikTok because: "I've heard that even people who don't feel addicted to any other social media are super addicted to TikTok and spend hours on it. And they don't even have a sense of time when they're on it. And that scares me."

I am predicting that based on the huge success of TikTok, these new features on Snapchat and Instagram are going to become very popular. I could be wrong, but no matter what, let's get the conversation going.