It is mind boggling, and at the same time not surprising at all, that China is enforcing a humane policy to protect its children when we are not willing to do the same.
By whose standards? The United States has never been an ideologically cohesive nation outside some basic principles of representative democracy - and even those have been challenged at moments in our history. The moment you get beyond the basics of a unified military, postal service, weights and measures, and currency, you quickly get into the social issues that have plagued our cohesion since the founding of the nation. Is Uncle Tom's Cabin a seminal work in understanding US history, or subversive and dangerous? We can't even decide that as a nation at the moment, so "how much social media is good for our kids?" would be a very, very ugly discussion to have at a national level.
I don't have Tik Tok installed, my kids only get the "reruns" off YouTube, but frankly I find it a bit extremist that the US government wants to ban an app that looks to me like people doing funny dances in their living rooms.
TikTok has expanded to be the dominant short form video platform for every interest, niche, and micro niche you can imagine that exists, and even ones you can't imagine.
Please anyone reading this comment replace "TikTok = people dancing" with "TikTok = feed + discovery for short form video tailored to your specific interests no matter how niche". Yes this includes programming, science, education, dancing, gaming, cooking, acrobatics, painting, arguing, politics, news, weather, etc. basically anything you can imagine that isn't against their content policies.
1) TikTok is really good at what they do.
2) They are a Chinese-owned company.
It certainly feels like if it weren't for #2, they would be praised for their innovation and held up as a great American success story. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be skepticism in the name of national security, but of all the things threatening to destroy the planet on any given day, this feels low on the list.
YouTube videos are frequently 30-120 seconds of relevant content padded to 10-15 minutes. Most TikTok videos are close to just those 30-120 relevant seconds.
If Congress bans it, they'll probably lose the trust and interest of a massive percentage of Americans under the age of 30.
It is this and also that young people are especially malleable, so content that they see can cause long-term psychological and emotional damage, or--more pertinently to governments' interests--can introduce ideological change that they don't control.
There is a wide variety of content on TikTok. One category is (tens/hundreds of) thousands of people who watched the Congressional "democracy" theatre on the TikTok ban realizing that their so-called democracy is fake, a laughing stock, pick your pejorative. Millions of people who formerly had no clue, now realize absolutely that what is on the label does not match what is on the tin.
Of course, they could have realized this via other means since it has been the case for ages, but whether they would have is another story.
If I was running an illusory regime, I'd take out TikTok too, it's just old fashioned common sense.
Never mind that the policy here is actually not about protecting children at all, since its banning an app entirely where the vast majority of users are adults.