TikTok: what’s all the song and dance about?

TikTok has been hogging the headlines recently. It’s been banned in several countries, by several companies and institutions, and is now facing expulsion from the United States: one could be forgiven for thinking the app was a threat to humanity rather than a gimmicky bit of technology that allows young people to make musical videos of themselves.

Indeed, the alarm has become so shrill and pervasive that TikTok’s owners, ByteDance, is hoping to survive by selling its operations in the United States and break its alleged links to the Chinese government, with Microsoft now being vaunted as a potential buyer. So what’s all the song and dance about?

For India, which announced it was banning TikTok at the end of June, along with 60 other apps Chinese-owned apps, this is about retaliation for the border clashes with its northern neighbor, which have already led to bloodshed on several occasions. In addition, India sees itself as protecting its cultural identity. In several Muslim countries, TikTok has been banned because it is seen as inciting behavior that supposedly transgresses Islamic morality.

Can an app really be so harmful? The short answer is yes. We’ve already seen from other social networks how dependent we can become on approval and affirmation, and when a certain environment rewards, either with cash or Likes, certain behavior, we are attracted by it. TikTok encourages its users to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and in many cases encourages sexualization of young people, who find themselves doing things they wouldn’t normally do, but that on TikTok, seems to make sense.

Equally, it could be argued that TikTok users are free to exercise their judgment about what they get up to on the app. The problem, of course, is that many TikTok users are children, and many of them, very young children, who quickly find themselves in an environment where they are encouraged to indulge in increasingly provocative behavior in return for recognition and approval.

But approval from whom? I have never advocated banning smartphones for children, rather the opposite, giving them the opportunity from a young age to become familiar with them. However, minors are supposed to be limited to using a “protected” version of TikTok, but kids don’t want the restrictions this involves, so they simply say they are older, and enter an environment where adults can see their content and talk to them unsupervised. On top of which, TikTok’s system of recommendations provides easy access to videos of minors in provocative poses. An explosive cocktail.

There are other aspects to the current hullaballoo over TikTok: from a childish US president angry that some young people have used it to boycott his rallies, to the trade tensions between the United States and China over digital supremacy. US apps also use our data, don’t they? True, but they operate in a well-defined legal environment and aren’t obliged to pass that data on to their government if requested.

Am I and many others overreacting to TikTok? Maybe, but although I don’t consider myself a prude, I have to say that some of the videos I have seen on the app are potentially worrying. At the same, it has to be said that TikTok handled the mounting controversy around it badly.

In short, this is an issue for parents to decide on, and whether they are prepared to allow their children’s behavior to be influenced by the kind of environment described above.

(En espa?ol, aquí)

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