Every night, I find myself scrolling through my “For You” page (FYP) on TikTok until the algorithm gives me a sign to close the app and shut my eyes in favour of sleep – that sign normally shows itself through a 30-second clip of an ingrown hair being extracted, or the satisfying pop of a whitehead, which always seem to appear just as my eyes begin to feel heavy.
The first reaction when feeling like this should be “phone off, alarm on”, but, for some reason, I, like many others, find myself scrolling endlessly through these accounts as I convince myself to watch “just one more”, almost unable to look away.