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– The Verge has a bizarre story of how a well-meaning teenager inadvertently spoiled over 4,000 social science studies. In July, Sarah Frank posted a video on TikTok giving advice on how to make extra money through “side activities”. In one of her tips, she suggested her followers go to Prolific.co, where sociologists pay people to fill out surveys for their studies. Frank showed how she could make around $ 15 a day, and the advice went viral. Over 4 million people watched the video, and soon Prolific was inundated with tens of thousands of people signing up. The problem? Almost all of them were young people and women, like Frank, and the little-known site had no screening methods in place to ensure that the studies provided a good mix of demographics among respondents.
History notes that scientists initially struggled to figure out what was going on – see this Tweeter complaining that a study ended with 91% of women surveyed, until the mystery is solved. The Verge reports that around 4,600 studies have been “disrupted” by the influx of newcomers, but a Prolific director says the vast majority can be saved. The site is now working on backups. As for Frank, now a freshman at Brown, “it certainly didn’t occur to me that the video was going to explode,” she said. “I just posted it for my friends and followers, not for the reach it ended up getting.” As an article in Futurism observes, “it just shows the power that even a teenager with a modest audience can have using technology platforms like TikTok.” (Read more TikTok stories.)
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