Following A Girl Home to Make Sure She’s Safe.

This is the @TikTok trend that brings together the worst of the platform x the worst of male youth counterculture.

Whilst I’ve never experienced being a female walking or running at night, I have done a lot of work on TikTok from an agency comms perspective and researched women’s relationship with running through various projects over the past decade.

I’ll start by saying TikTok is at it best when it’s community building and making people feel seen, heard, and understood. #RunTok is arguably the most effective digital platform that has got Gen Z women into running, and kept them running. Moreso than Strava, Couch to 5K, Nike Run Club, or any other training app that’s built with functaionality at its core and complemented by community.

To also give credit - TikTok is also great at removing dangerous content ‘when it’s black & white’ - ie falls neatly into its content moderation policy.

The ‘Following A Girl Home to Make Sure She’s Safe’ trend is TikTok at its worst. Why?

It undoes the genuine positive impact it has on the communities it claims to support, proving that as a company it doesn’t actually care about people beyond their time spent on platform.
It exposes its miseducation putting this kind of content into the category of what they consider to be niche comedy x freedom of speech, and not in the category of perpetuating violence.
Their business model requires people on the platform as often, for as long as possible, which in turn means the flow of new content needs to be unlimited, thus ‘removing content’ is a last resort. So no one is motivated or incentivsed to define those grey areas.

Then what does this do for Running?

Well, you already know.

Damage.

Only behind ‘I don’t like running’ and ‘finding the time’, SAFETY is the main reason cited why women choose not to run.

Pick your stat from an array of research studies over the years or tragic event from the past fortnight…

92% of women (across 9 countries) are concerned for their safety when they run
47% of US women cited lack of safe spaces as the primary reason they don’t run
38% of women have experienced physical or verbal harassment while running
31% of women who like running have stopped altogether due to safety concerns
11 days ago Alyssa Lokits was murdered running in a park at night in Nashville.

It’s f**king horrific.

Domestic violence organisation can raise awareness, much needed funds and educate on the topic. And they do - great.

Brands can try everything to solve this through creative ways to address the issue and raise awareness + offer solves via product development. And they do - great.

Development of products (both digital & physical) can try to solve this through wearable tech that sets off alarm when triggered, informs contacts automatically, through digital products that map safe run routes and inform your live location to selected contacts, through hi-vis clothing developed by all the major clothing / run brands. Again - great.

City planning can try to solve this through designing safe running routes and designated areas at a city planning level. This trend has increased in recent years - great.

But as long as all this effort is undermined by people and platforms that don’t see a problem with making light of it - progress remains limited.

Dave Matthews