March 16, 2024 - 8:00am
Four years after Donald Trump’s failed attempt, Democrats and Republicans have just passed a bill which could see social media giant TikTok banned in the US. “We are united in our concern,” said spokesmen for the two parties, “about the national security threat posed by TikTok — a platform with enormous power to influence and divide Americans.” The move was made in response to fears that the app’s parent company ByteDance shared user data with the Chinese government, and is part of a wider effort to mitigate the dangers of major firms managed by “foreign adversaries”.
Could — or should — the UK follow in their footsteps? If these security concerns weren’t enough, the social impact of the app should always have been cause for alarm. There is something uniquely pernicious about TikTok’s algorithm, which feeds users endless loops of short-form content — content that is increasingly sped-up and, inevitably, dumbed-down. It is hardly a climate for cultivating informed or thoughtful opinions, and yet 28% of teenagers now use TikTok as their primary source for news and political activism.
More subtly, it is an algorithm that renders users almost completely passive. TikTok does not even require the autonomy of scrolling, like other social media giants. Instead, it automatically plays a series of videos that become hyper-personalised with even the slightest engagement.
Rewatching a video just once triggers the algorithm to show more and more related content, which has been found to lure teenagers into spirals of exposure to self-harm, eating disorders and harmful ideologies. Arguably more so than other platforms, TikTok fixates users on content that appeals to their darkest impulses and insecurities – content they would not otherwise actively choose to consume.
Shrug it off as “doomscrolling”, but as a society we should take anything that encourages such behaviour seriously. In this case, the medium really is the message: the lack of agency wired into the TikTok algorithm tells us everything we need to know about its tendency to manipulate and corrupt young minds.
A little under a decade ago, the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler warned that this kind of technology is dangerous precisely because it removes the need for rational agency in the consumption of content. This he described in terms of “participation”: whereas historically human beings would actively participate in the entertainment they consume — for example, playing an instrument in order to experience music — we are now subjected to media as passive recipients.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt took them 4 years to realize that Trump was right. Diplodocus thought faster
The case for care regarding national security and the erosion of agency is well made, the piece raises some valid concerns. Another factor is to how much we encourage and value certain spiritual strengths such as self-reliance, voluntary restraint, and an appreciation of the real Self.
As these lend the essential life skills needed from studying to parenting, and much else between, this may be a more important factor in the long term, not least since it applies to all advances in media and technology by the ability to create market places that would not give such birth to so many poorly conceived and exploitative offerings. By definition it could foster more benign market forces since, as the article well observes, they are demand led. This also appears to have a direct correspondence to activities such as gambling and alcohol & drug abuse. It’s axiomatic that ‘the nature of the demand determines the character of what the market offers.’ For example, empower children with the values and strength of mind to stay out of the bookies and they – and many others – will be thankful!
Spirituality seems to be freeing itself from not only institutions but also from New Age shallowness, and not a few commentators have written on, or personally felt the influence of, a growing rise in the spiritual feeling independent from religious settings, a sense of interconnection or unity with the natural world, an altruistic fraternity with others, a philosophical questioning of first principles, that is being helped – with not a little irony – by AI, which however gifted seems itself incapable of it, for now.
I’d absolutely agree with the spiritual side of both the author’s and your points, well made. I see a danger that young people may not even undergo the development of spirituality which comes with learning, experience and agency. Perhaps many people in previous generations didn’t do so either, caught up in the need to earn a crust while organised religion enabled them to have a foothold in spirituality, but as passive recipients of a handed-down orthodoxy.
As anyone engaged with human cultural issues will appreciate, the process of engagement isn’t easy and has to be “earned” by being an active participant. It’s quite clear that social media is designed specifically to bypass this process altogether, and those in control of such platforms understand all too well how compliance and subservience can be induced among whole swathes of the population.
What’s at stake here is the nature of our civilisation, and i include within that the whole of the developed and developing world, not just the West. I’m not sure there’s anything more important than that, and if a ban on such platforms can be introduced it would at least demonstrate that our legislators and those who influence them have some grasp of the problem.
Now if only we could ensure that every president learned philosophy, or that philosophers alone could become president…
If you could convince me that current-day philosophers aren’t just as woke as other humanities academics generally are.
Of course we should ban it, followed by Facebook and and the waste of time formally called Twitter:
So the government should be allowed to ban us from using our computers to access content that it believes is bad for our mental health?
https://www.racket.news/p/why-the-tiktok-ban-is-so-dangerous