Students Weigh in On Danger Posed by TikTok, Other Social Media Platforms

The Wall Street Journal recently invited college students to share their opinions regarding the dangers of social media giants like TikTok as part of the paper’s Future View segment.

TikTok boasts approximately one billion users worldwide — including 135 million or more in the U.S. — making it one of the most popular social media platforms on earth.

But the platform — and its Chinese-based parent company ByteDance — have long been under fire for serving kids a steady “diet of darkness” online and struggling to protect private user data from entities in China, such as the Chinese Communist Party.

In the opinion piece, one college student notes,

Teenagers have long encountered inappropriate content on the internet, but never has it been served to them on a silver platter the way it is now. The development of the “For You” page on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms has led to users being spoon-fed a range of posts from accounts they don’t follow. Since the algorithms prioritize engaging content, a single like, share or extended viewing of an inappropriate post from an unknown source can cause a teenager’s feed to be overloaded with similar unseemly posts.

Another writes,

The only proper response to TikTok is a permanent ban. . . . It is obvious that TikTok and the Chinese Communist Party behind it aren’t interested in enforcing and respecting any rules—they don’t play by them, and this won’t change.

TikTok has faced a great deal of criticism over the years from policymakers and concerned citizens.

Last month the Wall Street Journal highlighted how TikTok let accounts linked to the Chinese government spread misleading content targeting U.S. voters ahead of the 2024 election.

Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Justice sued TikTok for allegedly violating federal laws intended to protect children online.

In 2022, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security sharing concerns about TikTok’s operations in the U.S., saying in part,

TikTok captures vast amounts of private information on users, including American citizens, and has long been suspected of providing the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] with potential access to that information. This threatens the safety and security of American citizens, and also functions as an avenue for the Chinese government to track the locations of and develop blackmail on Federal employees and contractors.

U.S. Congressman Bruce Westerman wrote in March,

Although TikTok executives claim that it does not share any data collected by the app, there are several Chinese laws in place that provide CCP [Chinese Communist Party] officials access to all user data collected by Chinese-owned tech companies, like TikTok. This means the CCP has access to sensitive data, like the location of every TikTok user worldwide, including the over 210 million Americans who have downloaded the app.

Last year Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed two lawsuits against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.

The A.G.’s lawsuits allege that TikTok and ByteDance failed to fully disclose that the company is subject to Chinese laws that mandate cooperation with intelligence activities of the People’s Republic of China and that TikTok aggressively collects sensitive user data.

Social media platforms are more than just websites or phone apps. These are multimillion dollar businesses owned and operated by investors and other interests. If the Chinese Communist Party can influence TikTok, the CCP may be able to manipulate content, influence users, and harvest data on one of the world’s largest social media platform. That’s a serious concern.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.