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"TikTok Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale" does not imply "Instagram Is Not Harming Children at an Industrial Scale". It is simply studying one app. There have been numerous reports of the dangers Instagram poses (especially to teens), and when they get posted we get a raft of "why just pick on Instagram?" comments. It's tedious.
> Of course, if TikTok is removed, many children will just move to TikTok’s competitors: Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. This is why it’s so important for countries to follow Australia’s lead: raise the age for opening social media accounts to 16 and require the companies to enforce it.
Worse, it's distracting.
Maybe take a few minutes to actually read the piece and look at what else the author has written before jumping to the conclusion that they're just part of Trump's propaganda machine.
You clearly have not read anything that Haidt has written and you just ignore all of the comments pointing out that you're mistaken, so you just end up looking like a conspiracy theorist who refuses to even look at the actual evidence because you already know it's all a conspiracy. Looking unreasonable and irrational hurts your cause.
> There have been numerous reports of the dangers Instagram poses (especially to teens), and when they get posted we get a raft of "why just pick on Instagram?" comments. It's tedious.
The difference being of course that one website (tiktok) is being targeted and essentially no action against meta. That's why people chime in.
I doubt that every reader thought to themself, "this doesn't imply that non-Apple products will not be affected by the tariffs. I should look more deeply into this so I can make a more important purchase that offsets a greater future cost" before charging out the door to buy more expensive iPhones.
When someone writes something that singles out a particular company, group, or individual, we might not understand the subtext and interests at play, but we must at least allow others to account for the purpose and effects.
In this case, the author wasn't implying that industrialized harm to children was a new or unique problem with Tik Tok and has written several articles with similar titles about other social media to highlight that this is a bigger problem that should be acknowledged and addressed at a higher level. That alone makes it not just reasonable, but desirable to bring up that there are other members of that industry.
> Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether it should step in to block or delay the implementation of a law that would ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. If not blocked, the law will force TikTok to cease operations in the U.S. on January 19, unless its Chinese corporate owner (Bytedance) sells to a buyer not controlled by a foreign adversary. The case hinges entirely on constitutional arguments pertaining to national security and free speech. The Justices will hear no evidence about addiction, depression, sexual exploitation, or any of the many harms to children that have been alleged, in separate lawsuits filed by 14 state Attorneys General, to be widespread on TikTok.
A quite likely outcome here is that TikTok is allowed to continue targeting children with harmful content. I think "hey, what's our goal here, and are we accomplishing that goal with these actions" to be an entirely reasonable response. That's how I interpreted the comment you replied to.
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/industrial-scale-snapchat
The archive also includes a bunch of articles on social media in general, edtech, and similar.
Yeah, it's not "moronic propaganda", it's someone who has, historically and famously so, been very focused on the broad issue of social media's impacts focusing in on various specific aspects of it, of which TikTok is a part.
OP seems, respectfully so, ignorant to who Haidt is and would perhaps do well to read up on more of his output (apologies to OP if this assumption is incorrect).
The damned site he writes under is called After Babel! His identity at its core is linked to not just convincing but aggravating agitating and hyping an image of the world made "anxious" and depressed by devices.
There's a lot of other causes for the world being as unsupportive as it is. As a society we are losing meaningful connection to work, by having such vast mega corps sucking up all the work, managing the world from the top down. The concentration of capital has had enormously brutal impacts on the human spirit. But you won't see Haidt acknowledge or concern himself with what else is unravelling the human fabric.
There's some directionally correct concerns Haidt has, but as someone whose made it his calling to drive a wedge into what society is & demand a conservatism against the new, stridently & loudly, with no bones about what comes very close to lying, I cannot help but detest him deeply.
The evidence for this is far weaker than social media causing harm, but let's assume that you're right. All these problems caused by capitalism seemed to manifest during the the rise of social media tech giants, so they would still be the most likely culprit. I'm usually the person who defends capitalism, but even I review content recommendation systems on social media as capitalist brainwashing machines. I don't think being too conservative with limiting access to children is a bad thing.
He's a noted grifter with many years of making stuff up.
I read it a lot, but it's actually highly dubious that that is the main issue or a problem at all.
The problem is how western kids react to TikTok content and why they do it that way.
TikTok is also present in many other parts of the World and it's not causing the same harm everywhere, it must mean something.
The title should actually be "TikTok is harming American children at an industrial scale" and the focus should be on why Americans are more susceptible to TikTok[1], whose content, BTW, is mostly created by fellow Americans and not directly by the Chinese government.
[1] the why is also somewhat explained in the article, even though I do not believe those are root causes, they're just symptoms
“It’s better to have young people as an early adopter, especially the teenagers in the U.S. Why? They [sic] got a lot of time.”
“Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience . . . . If you look at China, the teenage culture doesn’t exist — the teens are super busy in school studying for tests, so they don’t have the time and luxury to play social media apps.”
The latter being honestly quite worrying for a country that prides itself to be "the best place in the World", kids should not waste so much time on what is basically a reel of (highly discutibile) ads disguised by entertainment.
Chinese seem to understand it and have created a healthier environments for their kids, maybe we could learn a thing or two...?
It should be noted that in every major US corporation there's been a meeting where executives said or proposed something very similar. It's capitalism 101, first: profit, then, maybe, if you're forced to, ask for forgiveness .
EDIT: as a non American, it looks to me like the old guns don't kill people, people do except coming from a country where there are virtually no guns around, and very few people kill other people and usually the gun is not the weapon of choice, maybe the problem is actually the people living in the USA plus giving them guns.
Nobody here said it was the main issue. But it is clearly problematic, and easy Google searches brings up tons of well-researched journalism as to why.
Algorithmic-driven feeds are brilliant from a psychological control perspective, because you don't need to outright censor stuff. You should need to downrake stuff you don't like so it shows up less often, and uprank stuff that shares your viewpoint. It's a very effective yet extremely subtle way to mold public opinion.
OTOH people in China don't.
You assume, "it's China, they must be bad, no?"
No
TikTok in China is mostly the same app, under a different name of course.
What is different?
The Chinese society, which does not exists in a vacuum and is not directed by evil entities coming from another planet to rule the Chinese people under their thumb, they are Chinese people too.
In China kids are only allowed a limited screen time per day, because that's what parents want, that's what studies showed them, that it's not safe for children, and that's their beacon: for parents, the ruling class and the society at large. They chose safety over instant gratification.
OTOH when US government tried to ban TikTok people protested vehemently. It was mostly so called "influencers" who turbo charged their armies of minions against a decision that could harm them, but was good for everybody else.
So Americans should ask themselves why they prefer TikTok over the safety of their children, Chinese people don't, because they don't do it.
edit: grammar
in theory
in practice people in the US clearly demonstrated that they don't care, as long as their hunger for instant gratification is satisfied.
TikTok is not banned and when rumors spread about the government wanting to shut it down, people protested.
I've never seen people protesting for heroin, honestly.
So, no! your analogy is faulty.
Citation needed?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
Honestly, I question the motivations of any techie trying to argue that a Chinese state-controlled propaganda machine consumed en masse by children is anything but especially problematic.
We tried to do the same trick with Islam post 9/11 and it was somewhat effective but it didn't have quite the same resonance. Which is weird because there's a long history of Black Marxist activism in the US, and of Black Muslim activism in the US, and you'd think if anything could convince Americans to hate and fear something, it's that thing's utility to Black liberation. But for some reason Islamophobia just seems to have been folded into the same generic antiwoke xenophobic white supremacist milieu as everything else, while people still jump on tables and go "eek!" at the thought of commie mind control.
It probably also helps that in most cases the short form videos aren't the person's "primary" output, but are teasers for longer-form content like video essays or podcasts.
But yes, the overall picture is extraordinarily dystopian, and it particularly preys on people who already struggle with attention management and guilt around productivity.
The YouTube's one (Shorts) is especially irritating, as you can't really ban children from using YT - there's stuff there they need to watch for classes and so on. I guess the only chance this will stop is a government regulation of some sorts.