TikTok has many problems, but the hysteria around this app distracts us from the larger problem of unregulated tech companies

As a society, our distrust of social media has never been higher, but right now most of the ire is directed at one app: TikTok. Last month, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell the platform to a non-Chinese company or be banned in America. This is the latest round of moral panic about TikTok, where everyone from Donald Trump to Real Clear Policy has criticised the app.

The Chinese social media video sharing app is under the US legislator’s spotlight as suspicions over its effects on users mounts. In the UK, government employees are banned from having TikTok on their work phones by order of the Cabinet Office.

This fresh round of TikTok discourse reminded me of this article by G_S_Bhogal, aka Gurwinder, writer of The Prism on Substack. In this blog post, he explores the often repeated idea that TikTok has been designed by the Chinese as a means to undermine the West by destroying the attention span of the youth and spreading mental health problems amongst them.

Fast food, smoking and short videos

Gurwinder’s article makes a compelling case, but I am not convinced that TikTok has been designed to damage the West or is more dangerous than other social media apps, especially short video apps like YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. It’s more accurate to say that TikTok is bad for you, like fast food or smoking. Unlike fast food or smoking, TikTok (and other social media apps) can learn about you to make the product more perfectly tailored to what you will find addictive.

In Gurwinder’s article he said: "Since a TikTok video is generally much shorter than, say, a YouTube video, the algorithm acquires training data from you at a much faster rate, allowing it to quickly zero in on you.” This rapid absorption of users’ data contributes to the platform's addictive qualities.

TikTok (and other short video social media apps) are also on your phone, something you take everywhere with you, check constantly and is essential for modern life. TikTok might break new ground in how to make addictive products, but it’s still just a product that has negative side effects (like alcohol, fast food or cigarettes), not a conspiracy.

Is vodka a bioweapon?

Labelling TikTok a weapon seems akin to claiming vodka was invented by Russia and sent to Britain to poison our livers and cause anti-social behaviour. British people drink too much, especially strong spirits, and this has problems for public health and anti-social behaviour.

Vodka, or any other alcoholic drink, wasn’t invented by anyone to do this. We did it to ourselves because of our own human flaws and a free market that allows dangerous products to be sold (more on that later).

The same can be said of the effect that TikTok has on our attention span and mental health. The reality is, we've known for some time that TikTok, like many other social media platforms, can have negative impacts on users’ mental health. Whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed the harmful effects Instagram has on teenage girls in 2021. TikTok is bad for us, but it’s not been deliberately made to damage Britain or America.

The evidence social media is addictive

A Guardian article by Richard Seymour from 2019 highlighted the addictive nature of social media, drawing parallels to gambling addiction. Seymour referenced the Skinner box, an experiment to control pigeons and rats based on a variable reward mechanism that demonstrates how these mechanisms can lead to addictive behaviours. This is the same mechanism that makes scrolling any social media platform (or flicking through photos on a dating app) addictive, so that we keep coming back for more.

The Netflix 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma also exposed the dark side of social media, revealing how these platforms exploit human psychology to keep users hooked and get us angrier and angrier about politics.

In essence, social media addiction can be seen as a form of gambling, where users chase the elusive reward of virality or validation. Your next tweet could make you famous. The next swipe could be your future wife or the best fuck of your life. The next refresh of the feed could contain anything, something amazing, something that will change your life, or the funniest joke you’ll read today. Keep scrolling. Keep swiping. Keep posting.

The safe amount to consume

I’m not saying that social media is as bad for you as injecting heroin into your eye-balls. There are safe (or at least safer) amounts of vodka or any other amount of alcohol to consume. Anything is poison given the incorrect dosage, even essentials like water and oxygen. There is a perfectly fine amount of social media to consume, depending on who you are. I wouldn’t give vodka or TikTok to an eight-year-old, or someone who struggles with addiction.

Every boozy Brit (and I speak from experience here as I do love a craft beer to go alongside a bowl of Raman at the end of the week) knows someone who has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, if they don’t know an alcoholic. Some things are bad for you. Some things are addictive, which makes it easy to consume too much of a bad thing. Social media is one of these bad things.

There are also concerns about the effects of social media on children, just like there are concerns about underage drinking. Certain products should not be available to children and their use should be restricted for teenagers, whose bodies and minds are still growing. Even industry insiders have criticised the addictive nature of smartphones and social media platforms. Steve Jobs never intended for iPhones to be used in the way that we use them.

The problem is the entire business model

We have known for a while that smartphones and social media are bad for us. They are also addictive, which can make their negative effects worse as users get trapped in a cycle of addiction. They also hook respectable middle-class people, who think that addicts are people drinking in Wetherspoons at 9am or spending all day in betting shops. Not them. Even though they’ve read a thousand tweets using #FBPE today and post a huge overshare on Facebook every day just to see the likes roll in.

Getting concerned about TikTok now is not really concern about the danger of these products, especially for children. It’s concern about China’s growing economic, political and cultural power.

It's not just TikTok that is a problem. American social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter (or X) or Facebook face similar criticisms for their impact on mental health and well-being, especially for young people. The issue extends beyond individual platforms; it's about the entire business model of using addictive products to monopolise our attention to sell us more ads.

Misaligned goals

"We need to have a conversation about what business practices are allowed, like we did with alcohol and cigarettes," said James Williams, author of Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.

Williams argues that the goals of social media platforms often clash with users' well-being and our own personal goals. While social media companies aim to maximise time spent on the platform, to serve users more ads, users want meaningful connections and genuine experiences. The two are not the same. We seek one but are offered the other.

Supermarkets don’t try to keep us trapped in their stores. Our goals are aligned: we want to buy and they want to sell. Sometimes they sell us extra stuff we don’t need, but generally the experience of visiting a supermarket is a partnership that benefits both sides. The same is not true for social media. No one’s plan for the day is to spend all day staring at algorithmically selected content. We want to connect with our friends, family and community. The platforms want to keep us hooked.

Chinese vs Western markets

The strongest evidence for the negative effects of TikTok lies in different content that is available when using the app in China, where it operates under a different set of regulations and cultural norms. The content is a lot more restricted and a lot less addictive. The reason for this is not that China is protecting its citizens from a weapon it made, it’s that the Chinese government restricts its citizens’ exposure to dangerous products. This is mainly because it wants its citizens to compete with America, but the point about government restrictions stands.

I said above that Brits drink too much. I’m not trying to shame anyone into drinking less. We partly drink too much because of our culture, but also because of our free-market economies overseen by neoliberal policy makers. Products that are dangerous are allowed by free markets as they’re making money for someone, which is considered a higher goal than public safety. 

Thus we get cigarettes, high alcohol drinks, fatty fast foods and addictive attention damaging social media platforms. This is especially true of tech products that are less regulated than food and drink.

 Restrict products that are dangerous

Personal freedom and economic freedom are linked (although they are not exactly the same thing as neoliberals would argue) and people should be given the choice about what they consume. If you want to eat McDonalds for every meal of every day, then you should be able to do so free from interference of the state (although I would recommend against it). I feel the same about injecting heroin into your eye-balls, if you really want to do it then go for it (although I certainly wouldn’t recommend it). 

The state does restrict products that are dangerous. You can’t make cigarettes for children any more or sell alcohol to anyone despite their age. The state has the power to intervene to protect public health, whether that's banning cars that pollute too much or social media products that damage our mental health by monopolising our attention. The state just chooses to exercise that power in some areas and not others due to corporate pressure and ideology.

A moral panic about TikTok being a Chinese weapon is not helping tackle the real issue. What we need is to recognise that many social media platforms create products that are dangerous and then use the power of the state to restrict products that are dangerous, especially for young people.

The youth has bigger problems than TikTok

Also, while we’re having a moral panic about TikTok’s effect on the youth, it's essential to remember the real issues affecting young people today (and by this I mean people under 45), such as a lack of affordable housing, poor rights for renters (and bad conditions in a lot of rentals), high levels of student debt, low wage growth and not enough savings to name a few.

Blaming TikTok for societal ills seems misplaced when larger systemic issues are causing problems for young people. There’s no moral panic to fix the housing crisis to protect future generations. That would involve rolling back neoliberal policies that make money for powerful people.

Trump didn’t get started on TikTok

In the end, the problem isn't that TikTok is a weapon; it's that the under-regulated tech industry churns out products that can harm us. As we navigate this brave new world of social media, it's crucial to remain vigilant and advocate for regulations that prioritise user well-being over profit.

After all, in the age of Trump grabbing attention and power via Twitter, perhaps the biggest threat to the West isn't TikTok or China, but the unchecked power of tech giants.