TikTok—the Chinese Communist Party’s Trojan horse smartphone app that especially targets children and teens—is back in the headlines as Congress considers legislation to address the national security threat it constitutes, among other concerns.
Even if Elon Musk or another tech mogul were to roll out an alternative virtual pop candy platform, theoretically untainted by ties to foreign adversaries, do we want our kids sucking it down? TikTok is the intellectual equivalent of Skittles on speed.
Indeed, TikTok is a potential existential threat from a national security and terrorism standpoint. Beyond that, however, there is a subtle yet no less serious peril eating away at the internal organs of our society—a slow drip of digital acid evaporating our children’s brains, creating an inbred army of youthful, hollow-skulled zombies.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, America is facing a clear and present danger of destroying her civilization in real time—and the clock is TikToking.
There is no shortage of disturbing statistics and damning studies to substantiate this diagnosis, but before you swipe to the next screen, consider comparing academic test scores, literacy rates, depression/eating disorders, and addiction and crime rates in the United States from the pre- and post-smart phone saturation of our society. A Willy Wonka smorgasbord of saccharine content is being served to both children and adults 24 hours a day, and TikTok leads the list as the golden ticket to winning a bout of digital diabetes. Simply stated, this stuff is poisoning our kids and polluting our future.
In the past, grandma would remind us to “eat your vegetables,” and even Saturday morning cartoons featured Popeye the Sailor Man pumping up his muscles with spinach. Today, we passively gorge our eyes and minds on a bottomless menu of toxic junk food and have thrust ourselves into a life-threatening epidemic. Doctors tell us that a patient’s path to healing starts with themselves. If they don’t recognize their condition for what it is and fail to follow the prescribed treatment, they are unlikely to get better. We are ultimately responsible for the health and future potential of ourselves and our children, and we urgently need to get a grip on the visual and mental diet we are allowing into our lives.
America is the land of the free and the home of the big ’n plenty. We prize both our freedom of choice and our abundance of choices, as well we should. Such freedom and its resulting prosperity is very much the healthy heart of the American ideal, and exercising our ideals is what birthed the strongest and sweetest nation in human history. However, you must maintain a proper diet and exercise to keep good health, and likewise, the only way to retain our freedom of choice and abundance is to continue “making good choices.”
Congress is not considering an outright ban of TikTok but rather a sensible divestment requirement to alleviate national security and other risks. Nevertheless, despite the possible merit of this pending action, we should take pause at any suggestion of increased government restrictions and maintain a healthy skepticism of the government’s appetite for reducing our freedoms. We must remember that the erosion of freedoms is cumulative and that which you feed, you will strengthen and increase.
We owe it to ourselves and our children to consider the real nutrition facts involved in the consumption of TikTok and similar technological turpitude. You allow the consumption of candy on occasion, but only as a concession for maintaining a sensible diet and exercise regimen throughout your normal daily routine. Incessantly snacking on a rainbow of visual glucose and psychological amphetamines is a guaranteed prescription for mental and spiritual decay; allowing this with children could be considered parental neglect.
Managing a healthy visual and intellectual diet goes hand in hand with protecting freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Digital diabetes is already rampant in our culture, which will not easily or willingly give up its addiction to the sugar high of abusing online apps such as TikTok. A firm rehab intervention is necessary, and the time remaining to slow or reverse the damage is rapidly counting down.
Tik Tok. Tik Tok.
