TikTok. Let’s talk about the ban coming next year.
On April 24, President Biden signed a bill that would ban TikTok in a year (2025). Now, as the year is drawing to an end, the reality is settling in for some people.
In my opinion, TikTok as a social media platform sucks.
TikTok has had a multitude of trends, both safe and dangerous. A few of these “trends” were the Benadryl challenge, the skull breaker challenge, Nyquil chicken, the outlet challenge, the ice cream licking, and teeth filing.
The Benadryl challenge was where a person would take as many Benadryl pills before they passed out. Ice cream licking was a trend where someone would open ice cream lids in a store and lick it before putting the ice cream back where they got it. The outlet challenge was to put a penny or some other coin into the outlet. In the skull breaker challenge, three people – two assailants, one victim – would jump up in a row and kick the middle person’s legs to make them fall, causing many concussions. Teeth filing is where someone took a nail file to their teeth and filed it down.
These trends were solely on TikTok and it made a bunch of dumb people do stupid things.
Now, TikTok is suing the government for violating their First Amendment right.
In my opinion, it’s not a violation of the First Amendment right for a ban on an app to happen. There are more options than that one platform, and people won’t die from the loss of TikTok. Don’t be dramatic about it.
In a recent Crimson Aviator survey of 229 teens, or “screenagers”, 25.9 percent said TikTok was the most used social media app. Why do people (more so the younger generation) not understand why this is getting banned?
At the start from when the ban was signed 50% of adults supported this to about 38% of adults in October supporting this ban. Why only 38%? There should be more ban supporters. TikTok is an endless scrolling social media app that contains deadly trends and what people call “brain rot.”
At some point it needs to be considered more of a harm than good. Illiteracy is going up due to AI use, and attention span is the lowest it’s been in many years. Why should parents and the government keep this app around for longer to harm the development of a child’s mind?
What has TikTok done to protect what children under 13 view on this app? An account for a child under 13 will automatically be set to a private account. There is a place where guardians of children can restrict what their children view and set time limits on the apps, which sounds pretty secure.
However, a parent would need to know about some of these trends and challenges to be able to restrict them. Most parents don’t watch TikTok, so parents are generally unaware of what’s on there and can’t know what to restrict.
Jeremy Li • Nov 14, 2024 at 9:05 am
In all due honesty, I’m not going to shed a tear for TikTok if it gets banned but I’m more concerned about the precedent it sets: if TikTok gets banned then what other apps could get banned under the guise of “””National Security”””?
The reason why the whole TikTok ban started was because of concerns over the content the platform was pushing (as stated in the article, a lot of the trends on the app are pretty bad and the algorithm seems to favor this harmful content – which if you compare to the Chinese version of the app (Douyin, the western version the app TikTok is banned in China) the content pushed is very different, I believe that the Chinese government requires that Douyin push educational/beneficial content) along with data privacy concerns (you should really check what this app is collecting…though that applies with most social media apps as well). The main difference was that rather than having some American company run the app (like Meta, Microsoft, or Google) it’s run by a company operating in a country that the US considers to be an adversary (China).
While this might be a little dramatic, but if some other country creates an application that might freak the Feds out for a different reason (like India creates a new hit social media app or something) then the precedent set probably wouldn’t be great and I worry about whether this could be the start of countries just splitting up the internet to be in more control (which is something authoritarian countries like Iran, Russia, and China do already).
Point is, I’m not supporting TikTok (I hate that app and I would never install it on my phone) but you should note that a lot of social media apps can be pretty bad as well and if Congress actually cared about solving the root of the problem then they would pass legislation affecting all platforms, not just TikTok.
Also, if you’re a parent then I think you should probably be more educated on what kinds of apps your child is using rather than relying on the government telling you what is okay. A lot of this can just be solved if some parents either better monitored their children’s internet use or simply didn’t allow them to use TikTok.
Basically, don’t have the government ban stuff if you can’t parent your child well enough.