TikTok: Friend or Foe?

There’s no denying that social media has become an integral part of our lives—technology that connects people and allows them to nurture relationships, hobbies, and businesses is an incredible advancement!?

However, I’d be remiss if I did not bring up the much-discussed platform TikTok and the increasing privacy, security and mental health concerns being brought up by national security, government officials, and parents. Owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, with over 40 million users daily. And due to its international ownership of the applications and the data it collects,? the use of this information is unregulated and largely unknown, which is alarming.

The elephant in the room, however, is: every social media platform collects information.?

The difference is TikTok is likely collecting data at a much larger scale than the U.S.-owned platforms such as Twitter and Meta, both of which comply with the U.S. government in regards to data sharing. And even though we don’t have the full picture of just how much TikTok is collecting from its users, their aggressive User Agreement gives us a good starting point for concern. Not only does TikTok ask users to agree to allow the application to access your other shared devices, it also asks for the application to collect data when not in use. This leads many security and privacy officials to assume that TikTok is collecting every keystroke on your devices once the application is installed.?

Most of the data collected on social media apps is freely provided by its users, but TikTok takes this collection a step further, gathering information on geolocation, the time frame spent in each location, your preferred content, and much more. In addition, reports have raised questions about the potential of ByteDance sharing user data with third parties and the Chinese government. This may seem benign, but when you take into consideration that this application is mapping out the locations of every user, it becomes troubling—what if the user was a public office holder, government official, or national security personnel? As Clint Harris, DevSecOps engineer with Second Front, explained to me, this means that all of a sudden the data sharing of location, habits, and content preferences can be used to the advantage of the collector. This is especially unsettling when we know the collector is a known adversary such as the Chinese Communist Party.?

On top of the privacy concern, it is undeniable that TikTok is addictive. The endless scrolling is psychologically entertaining—and disturbing—an endless supply of mindless content, sucking away time and influencing the degradation of our concentration levels. In short, it is changing our brains and influencing our opinions. TikTok’s algorithm is focused on habits. It learns about your preferences and to increasingly show you what you want to see. This takes “influencing” to an entirely new and uncharted level, corralling users into an echo chamber of agreeing opinions or only showing one side (and favorable to the parties involved with TikTok) of a situation. THAT is a dangerous tool. Not to mention the addictive nature of TikTok (and similar social media applications)—the endless scrolling content creating short attention spans, mind-numbing dependency, behavioral issues that can lead to poor mental, physical, and social health, especially for children and teens exposed to the app.?

This makes the recent announcement of The Biden Administration banning TikTok on all government-owned devices not all that surprising. Prior to this announcement, here at Second Front, while it was not a rule, it was well-known throughout the company that TikTok posed a security threat and was to be used on devices not connected to our company and work. Now, as this announcement has been made public, Second Front has adopted the same stance as our government regarding TikTok. Truthfully, it did not change much within our company as the majority of my colleagues are tech and national security experts and know the importance of secure data.

So what is the solution here?

For me, TikTok is not worth it. I want to protect my data, privacy, and mental well-being, and the best way to do that is to not participate in the app. But this is not me telling you to do the same—I think the best approach is an educated one. Be conscious and wary of what you are consuming—don’t consume just consume, that is a recipe for disaster and a huge time suck. Become a savvy consumer by asking yourself: is the content you are watching making you or your community better? Are you able to turn off the app, or step away from it for days at a time and not feel the pull of addiction? Do you know what the app is doing on your phone when you’re using it? (And when you’re not?) And that means thoroughly understanding the user agreement of the app, only using it on a device you feel comfortable with having its data mined and shared, and being cautious about the details shared online.

Like most new technologies, we are still learning, adapting, and improving. My hope is that in the next few years, we will have a better understanding and thus a better handle on this—and the next “big” social media apps to come. Working in #DefenseTech has taught me that it is essential to make conscious decisions about our online presence and choose platforms that align with our values and goals, and my hope is to spread this conscious decision to all of you!?