Are TikTok Dances Actually School Counseling Signals?

Those hallway TikTok routines are saying something, school counselor- and it’s not what you think.

In this episode, we decode what those repeated dance loops reveal about belonging, status, and the adolescent brain. 

You’ll learn how synchronized movement functions as a social signal and why these micro-performances can be early indicators of connection, pressure, or exclusion on your campus.

If you’ve ever walked past a TikTok trend at school and wondered what you’re really seeing, this episode gives you the insight you’ve been missing.

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Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! 

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Hallway Dance Phenomenon
• 1:24 Belonging Memories From Our Youth
• 3:39 Mirror Neurons And The Belonging Cocktail
• 5:24 Social Media’s Amplifier And Status
• 7:03 Jada And Kai: Surviving The Spotlight
• 8:33 Culture, Values, And Selective Belonging
• 9:51 Embodied Cognition And Healing Through Movement
• 11:13 Reading Roles: Leaders, Followers, Filmmakers
• 12:09 Community And Mastermind Invitation
• 12:44 When Synchrony Turns Into Hierarchy
• 13:52 Practical Ways To Anchor Belonging
• 15:36 Seeing The Instinct Beneath The Trend
• 17:21 Tease For Next Topic And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

You're walking down the hallway, and there they are again. A cluster of kids blocking the lockers, maybe one's holding a phone, three more are flinging their arms in what can only be described as coordinated chaos. Same song, same 10 seconds over and over and over again. And you think, how is it possible to care this much about isolated movements? And then they huddle around the phone, they check the replay, and they give each other those tiny little conspiratorial smiles. And then they do it again. They are not auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance. They're doing something older and much more human. Because what looks like random imitation is actually one of the deepest things that humans do to belong. And let me promise you this by the end of this episode, you're gonna understand why those TikTok routines aren't really about dancing at all. They're about identity survival. Hey school counselor, welcome back! In this episode of our Why Did They Do That series, we're asking a question every adult on campus has thought about at least once. Why do they copy every TikTok dance known to humankind? The answer might surprise you. Because sometimes it's not about fun at all, it's about proof that they still belong, they're seeing, and that they're in. Today we're gonna dig into the science, the psychology, and the real human stories behind those synchronized moves. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, the kind that gives you clarity and a little bit of rebellion, you're gonna be in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. Okay, so before we go scientific, pause with me and think about your own adolescence. Cringeworthy, right? If it was anything like mine, oh, it takes a lot to make me go back there. But think about did you ever mimic other people just to fit in? Or feel that tiny sting of being off trend and instantly on the outside. For me, and this is dating myself, but it was guest jeans back in the early 90s. Couldn't afford them. And then the beanie babies craze. I didn't understand it and really didn't want any, but still felt the disconnect when my friends talked about them endlessly. You probably have your own version of that memory. Moments where belonging felt kind of tenuous and fragile. These moments actually live in your body and they're your bridge to your students. Because every kid that walks your hallways is holding that same question. Do I belong here? And this kind of empathy expands your radar. So once you're standing inside that space, you can start to see what some of this synchronized movement really is and what it isn't. So let's peek under the hood. In the 1990s, neuroscientist Giacomo Risalati and his team discovered mirror neurons. When we watch someone move, our brains fire as if we're moving too. That's why a student can see a dance once and instantly feel like they know it. Their motor cortex has already rehearsed the steps. And when they finally do the dance and do it well, boom! Dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, the brain's belonging cocktail. For adolescents, this is not trivial. It's safety and inclusion and a nonverbal, you and me are in the same tribe, kind of vibe. A 2021 study by Wen and Team found that synchronized movement activated teens' neural reward systems and boosted feelings of closeness even among strangers. Anthropologist Edward Hall described synchronous movement as one of humanity's oldest bonding tools. Mirroring is not mimicking, it's communication. It's a shortcut to connection that is wired into our ancient circuitry. But biology is only half the story because social media takes that ancient signal and supercharges it. Every like becomes a dopamine hit. Every repost is a tiny badge of status. And for teens, that status is like oxygen. Nisi and Princeton 2019 found that teens use social media for two things. One, belonging, and two, comparison. Shamariman and Team 2020 found that dance challenges offer a quick path to belonging, but also create instant ranking. Who's good, who's cringe, and who's invisible? It's the same dynamic we talked about in the last episode, that emotional Marco Polo effect. Only now the call and response is choreographed. Students toss a dance into the digital void, and then they wait for a reply. Every like, every stitch, every hallway echo is another polo. And here's the kicker and the thing that grownups sometimes forget. Performing happens in the spotlight. And the spotlight is exhausting. And nowhere is that clearer than in the lives of these two students. Meet Jada. She is a sophomore trying to stay relevant in a fast-moving campus culture. For Jada, these dance trends just aren't fun anymore. They're survival. She says, if I don't post, it's like I don't exist. And then there's Kai. He's a junior without reliable Wi-Fi. And in a school moving at TikTok speed, Kai lives out of sync. And he starts believing that his version of belonging doesn't count. Two different experiences, but one outcome: disconnection. A 2022 Journal of Adolescent Health study found excessive social media use predicts anxiety and depression, especially for girls, because belonging becomes something you chase rather than something you feel. And this is where we come in. We are bilingual in the worlds of online belonging and offline human beingness. We can translate one to the other, which is kind of a superpower these days. And this kind of translation matters even more when we start talking about culture. Because for some students, dance trends clash with cultural or religious values. For them, public performance isn't just uncomfortable or cringeworthy, it's off limits. So what looks like resistance could actually be resilience. Juvenine and Team 2019 found that immigrant youth do best when they can engage selectively with mainstream culture while still holding on to heritage values. They called it accommodation without assimilation. Prudence Carter put this beautifully. Our job isn't to get everybody dancing, it's to affirm every valid path in belonging. But as TikTok shows us, that path often shows up in their bodies long before it shows up in their voices. Let's talk embodied cognition. For anxious or shy or neurodivergent students, synchronized movement can be a lifeline because they don't have to talk their way in, they can move their way in. Cohen and Team 2021 found that synchronized movement increased connection and emotion inference skills for autistic youth. Tortora's work in dance movement therapy echoes this. When you mirror a child's movement, you say, I see you. You're communicating, you're safe. And here's where I want to share something personal. You know, I wasn't always a school counselor. I used to be a teacher in the schools. And I used to teach dance. One year we had a student who was killed in a horrific accident at my elementary school. And the campus organized a balloon release in their honor. Now you can tell this was a few years ago, right? Because those are no longer allowed in most places. But back then, that was what you did. So we went outside, we had this big balloon release, and after the ceremony was over, they sent the kids back to class. Who do you suppose I received in my classroom immediately following that ceremony? None other than the students of the classmate who died. And you can imagine there were some big feelings in that room. There were lots of tears. There were lots of kids who were truly inconsolable, including the student's cousin. So I had a big task in front of me. I had no idea what to do, but being a movement specialist, I did the only thing that I knew how to do. I led students through movement. And we performed movement sequences together in synchronization, slowly and mindfully. And there were no more tears. There was sadness, certainly, but it wasn't overwhelming. Because we'd found common ground. We felt connected to one another in a shared experience. And it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Movement is belonging. Movement is mourning. Movement is meaning. So watch your students closely. Who's leading? Who's following? Who hovers? Who films the thing? Every piece of those situations tells you something about how your students are seeking safety, agency, or inclusion. And I'll tell you this: attuning to students this way, noticing their rhythms, spotting the difference between connection and pressure, that takes a lot out of us. It's the kind of work that gets easier when you have people to think it through with. People who see what you see and who get what's at stake. If you're craving clarity and community and answering questions like this, the kind that helps you hold the line between your own belonging and burnout, that's exactly what we're doing in the School for School Counselors Mastermind, where we keep conversations like this podcast going in real time with real cases and with real support for the big hard questions on campus. So if that sounds like something you need this year, I would love to see you there. There's going to be a link in the show notes. But let's talk about what happens when the synchrony stops being connection and instead becomes a trap. Because movement can also build hierarchy. Media scholar Lamore Schiffman calls this viral performativity when joy becomes performance, and performance becomes currency. On campus, it shows up like excluding peers who can't keep up or mocking students who miss a step. Moringo and Team 2020 found negative TikTok experiences predicted lower self-esteem and higher stress. Shing and Chartrend 2003 found that students with lower self-esteem mimic more unless they already feel like they belong. When a student seems torn between fitting in and feeling forced, the question that can change everything is: what about this feels authentic? And what feels like you have to do it? That kind of brings us to the part that you actually showed up for. What do we do with all of this? When you take all of this, the brain science, the pressure, the culture, the instinct, you start to see something pretty clearly. Students don't need us to acknowledge their dance trends. They need us to anchor the belonging that's underneath them. And the good news is that we can do that in ways that feel small and ordinary and incredibly human. It starts with helping students understand what's happening in their own bodies. Kids feel less controlled by the trend when they know why they're drawn to it, when they understand mirror neurons and reward systems and the instinct toward synchrony. When you explain that, it gives them agency inside of the dances. And then there's modeling, showing students what low-stakes movement looks like. A silly movement warm-up in a group, a rhythm game, clapping and stomping, anything that says your body is allowed to be here. The other thing that we forget sometimes is that belonging has more than one rhythm. Some kids belong in the dance, some belong on the edge of it, and some belong behind the camera, or making people laugh, or sitting shoulder to shoulder with the other kid that doesn't want to participate. When you name those other rhythms and opportunities, you give students permission to stop performing and just be. And finally, there's something that almost always works: the offline moments, the rituals that don't need a phone or a replay or an audience, a clapping pattern in morning announcements, a shared deep breath at the end of a lesson, or a student staff dance that's messy and chaotic and absolutely perfect. Those kinds of moments matter. Ding and colleagues called synchrony social glue, and they 100% meant it. A campus with a shared rhythm, even tiny ones, become a place where belonging isn't something that kids have to chase. It just lives in the walls. And when that happens, these dance trends and other little social expectations start to lose their pressure. The spotlight dims just a little bit, and students stop performing for visibility and start connecting for real. When you walk down that hallway tomorrow and you see that same cluster of kids crowding the lockers, the same song you've heard a hundred times, the same 10 seconds looping again and again, I hope you see it differently. I hope that now you won't see chaos or just performance or eye-rolling repetition. I hope you see the instinct underneath it. That ancient human drive to sync up with somebody else, to feel part of something, to say without words, stick with me. I'm here, and you're here too. Because that's what all this is. That's what they're trying to solve with all the shoulder pops and the spins and the choreography. They're trying to answer the same question every adolescent in the history of time has asked. Where do I fit? It's not immaturity, my friend, it's development. And if we can see that clearly, really see it, then we can meet them in places far deeper and more important than a dance trend. We can help them sort the belonging from the performing, the this is me from the this is what gets me noticed, the safety from the spotlight. Tucked inside that little crowd is the heartbeat of adolescence, and it's messy and rhythmic and hopeful and desperately human. Hey, thanks for walking through this with me today. So last week we explored language, today we explored movement. Next time, we're gonna talk about another deep mystery of the adolescent brain. Why do they wear hoodies in 90-degree heat? It's a mystery for the ages, and we're going to unravel it in the next episode. So keep listening to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, trying to help you see the science behind these strange behaviors, and maybe the humanity too. So until next time, keep dancing and take care.