Tiktok is clearly the worst of all due to incredibly high usage among kids. And being controlled by the Chinese government is clearly problematic.
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.