Social media is not just some safe pastime. It can have real negative effects on children, and TikTok is one of the biggest offenders.
At Politico, Jack Shafer wrote up “a defense of TikTok.” He sets aside the fact that the app is Chinese spyware and stipulates that it “deserves most of the bricks thrown at it,” but he writes that “TikTok has much to commend it, and we shouldn’t be shy about saying so.” Shafer first compares outrage against social media to past hostility to the telegraph, the telephone, television, radio, and electricity, as if people are merely overreacting to technological advancement when they raise concerns about social media.
TIKTOK COULD BE FINED $27M BY UK WATCHDOG FOR FAILING TO PROTECT CHILDREN’S DATA
But the issue with social media is not necessarily what it is, but who runs it. In that regard, you cannot simply put aside the fact that TikTok is a Chinese-owned company that collects, and distributes, more personal data than any other social media app. We already know that the app has attempted to bypass protections put in place by the Google and Apple app stores, and the app has been caught logging the keystrokes of users, which its company then lied about.
Shafer compares wasting time on social media to watching football and then praises the community feeling of TikTok, “particularly for LGBTQ kids, minorities, or subcultures.” He then scuttles his own comparison by noting that “of course, TikTok can be anxiety-inducing, a tool of conformity and bullying, and a place to encourage teens to attempt dangerous ‘challenges.’” Well, yeah.
While he claims that “inducers of anxiety, conformity, bullying and risk-taking abound in society,” it is simply not the case that the hobbies to which he compares social media surfing have this drawback. Watching football, playing video games, and reading comic books may indeed be a waste of time, but those time-wasters don’t have the same deleterious effects as social media, especially for children.
TikTok, in particular, is now being used to advertise gender transitions directly to children, fueling gender confusion and convincing them that permanently, chemically, and physically altering their bodies will give them happiness. It makes the body image issues fueled by Instagram look mild in comparison.
Finally, Shafer says that TikTok must not be all bad. “Sometimes the best way to judge a person or institution is to ask who opposes them,” Shafer writes, noting that former President Donald Trump tried to ban the app and the Russian government fined it for refusing to delete “LGBT propaganda.” “With enemies like that, how bad can TikTok be?”
Joking or not, this is an absurd point to raise in a piece that already unwisely set aside the app’s ties to the Chinese state. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company that vowed to “further deepen cooperation” with the genocidal Chinese Communist Party and, by law, cannot refuse to share data with it. It is effectively Chinese spyware run by a company that cheerleads and colludes with the worst human rights abusers on the planet. It turns out it can be pretty bad.
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Social media is not a net evil. User experience varies from user to user and app to app. But, by just about every metric, TikTok is a net negative, especially for children. It is a toxic cesspool at best and a national security risk at worst. It deserves no defense from any pocket of American media.
