TikTok Is Digital Fentanyl—U.S. Ownership Won’t Change That

Last year, in a historic bipartisan effort, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law stipulated that unless TikTok—the wildly popular video sharing app owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company with CCP members on its board—was sold to a U.S. company, it would be banned. A legal challenge followed, but the Supreme Court upheld the law in a unanimous 9–0 decision. The ban went into effect on January 19, and TikTok shut down services to comply with the law. But the following day, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to delay the ban for seventy-five days, in order to give ByteDance more time to strike a deal with a U.S. buyer.

The law is a step in the right direction for national security. TikTok aggressively harvests more data than any other social media platform, collecting names, contacts, and GPS locations. It even monitors keystrokes, regardless of whether one is using the app or not, allowing TikTok to potentially access sensitive data, such as log-in credentials to bank accounts.

Through TikTok, the CCP was acquiring data on a third of the American population. It was also politically influencing the U.S. through the app’s algorithms, spreading videos that supported CCP-friendly politicians or agendas and exacerbating divisions in American society. 

Fortunately, Americans need no longer worry about their data falling into the hands of a foreign power. Yet even if ByteDance successfully secures a U.S. buyer, it does not change the fact that TikTok is, ultimately, digital fentanyl. Recommendation algorithms, infinite scrolls, social metrics such as “likes” and “shares,” and constant notifications all trigger the release of dopamine in the brain to keep users constantly craving and coming back for more. America’s children are most vulnerable to the app’s devastating effects, which include mental illness, anxiety, depression, attention disorders, and even physical tics, especially in teen girls. It also promotes dangerous eating disorder content for girls, contributing to a growing wave of cases across the country. 

Reports indicate that TikTok’s aggressive recommendation algorithms drive young kids down rabbit holes full of drug-related and sexual content. Other reports indicate that the app has become a venue for child sexual exploitation. Law-enforcement officials say that the platform has emerged as the biggest online danger zone. By recommending accounts of young girls to traffickers, TikTok connects predators to victims. A Forbes review of hundreds of TikTok livestreams revealed “how viewers regularly use the comments to urge young girls to perform acts that appear to toe the line of child pornography—rewarding those who oblige with TikTok gifts, which can be redeemed for money, or off-platform payments to Venmo, PayPal or Cash App accounts.” 

Kids are also fed dangerous challenges on the app, such as the “blackout challenge,” in which participants intentionally choke themselves with household items for views. Ten-year-old Nylah Anderson encountered the challenge on her recommendation page, and died after hanging herself by a purse strap in her bedroom closet. 

China knew they were exporting digital fentanyl to America’s children, revealed most starkly by the utter disparity between the U.S. and the Chinese version of the app, which promotes educational content and limits children’s use to forty minutes per day, with overnight scrolling banned. The CCP was all too happy to turn our children into dopamine robots, sapping our national intellect and strength. 

The question now is: Will a U.S. company turn its own children into dopamine addicts? Will TikTok’s digital fentanyl be any safer if the supplier is a U.S. company, rather than Chinese? 

Though national security concerns have been removed, the app’s design and content will likely prove to be just as deadly to our children if TikTok doesn’t change its practices. Thus, if the Trump administration is going to help negotiate a sale rather than ban the app altogether, it should use the full force of its authority to put pressure on any buyer to change these harmful aspects of the app. America’s children—our future leaders—depend on it.

Image via Pexels.