TikTok Is a Huge Threat to Our Democracy and Our Kids. Ban It Now | Opinion
NewsweekDec 08, 2022
Britain's media regulator Ofcom has published its annual survey on children's and parents' online attitudes, showing that TikTok's use among UK children increased to 53% of those aged between 3 to 17 in 2022 — three points higher than in the prior year.
The Children's Media Lives report further revealed that one-quarter of five to seven-year-olds and nearly one-fifth of three to four-year-olds are using TikTok, with children aged eight or above increasingly preferring "split-screen" viewing to watch two, often unrelated, videos at once.
It has been widely known that TikTok's data-harvesting practices in favor of the Chinese government represent a national security threat, but this platform has an even darker side. While promoting educational clips to children in its Chinese version, TikTok purposely exposes Western children to inappropriate sexual and substance-related content. It's about time that this weaponized app is banned once and for all.
Concerns about the experience of children using TikTok are entirely justifiable, but it's outrageous that the platform has been criticized as if such issues are not common to every other major social media platform. Politicians have been exploiting the most striking fears of parents while failing to address basic, urgent challenges, such as providing food to all school children, in a blatant show of hypocrisy.
There's a 30% chance that the US will ban TikTok before 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.