There’s little disagreement over the power of social media to create turmoil and disruption among today’s youth. The question is what to do about it.
For a long time, social media has been identified as a key culprit in teenage bullying. But now apps on smartphones are being blamed for a rise in other worrisome trends, such as an increase in plastic surgery among youth and a sudden surge in the number of kids identifying as transgender.
Meanwhile school boards are grappling with ways to curtail smartphone use in the classroom, as it’s getting in the way of meaningful learning.
The Toronto District School Board is reworking their smartphone policy after the current one was found to be weak in terms of enforcement. Teachers have a hard time getting kids to focus and aren’t always able to get them to put the devices away during instruction time.
The TDSB, the largest board in Canada, is far from the only institution implementing such measures. The largest example of such rules aimed at getting our kids back on track are proposed bans on TikTok.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation a couple of weeks ago that effectively bans TikTok from America. The bill garnered non-partisan support, with 197 Republicans and 155 Democrats voting in favour of it. (15 Republicans and 50 Democrats voted against it.)
If the U.S. Senate goes on to pass the legislation, it would give TikTok owner ByteDance the choice to either sell TikTok within six months to an American owner or find itself removed from app stores and U.S.-based web hosting services.
The motivation for the bill stems from how TikTok is owned by a Chinese company that is widely believed to take its cue from the communist regime of Xi Jinping. All private companies in China are considered to be heavily under the sway of the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok’s detractors argue that it is a security threat becafuse having the app on our devices makes us vulnerable to potential information theft and spying by the Chinese regime. There are also legitimate concerns that TikTok’s algorithm promotes unsavoury content. The videos that pop up on screen for young people to watch send them down rabbit holes that worsen their mental health.
The Chinese regime is actually working to ban minors in their country from accessing social media and to put a cap on the amount of kids’ daily screen time. They know it’s not good for their kids and for the future of their society. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have no problem doing the opposite in North America, letting kids become screen zombies and adopting harmful perspectives and values from what they watch.
A new poll out from Leger shows that 51 percent of respondents in Canada indicate they would support the federal government following their American counterparts and implementing a similar ban.
It should be no surprise that younger Canadians are less supportive of a ban, though. When asked about TikTok usage, Leger found that almost half of respondents between 18 and 34 are on the popular app while only 12 percent of those over 55 use it.
The Liberal government did reveal shortly after the U.S. bill passed in the House of Representatives that Canada had already ordered a national security review of TikTok.
How do we proceed? Is it right to ban something that half of young adults use? It’s one thing to ban smartphones from schools during class time, which I fully support. But can we tell a 25 year-old that they’re not able to make their own social media choices?
While the U.S. bill is sold as a TikTok ban in headlines, the truth is it’s a foreign divestment bill. It’s more a ban of TikTok’s Chinese ownership. If ByteDance does sell off the app and an American company owns it, we’ll still have very similar challenges with social media addiction and troubling content. After all, it’s not like Instagram and X.com don’t pose their own challenges to users young and old alike.
The proposed ban and national security reviews are still healthy exercises though, because even if nothing comes of them they make it clear to the national consciousness that there are very serious problems with social media that we need to take seriously.
Yes, foreign interference and espionage via social media is a real issue. Yes, social media addiction and the content pushed by its algorithms can mess up our kids.
When it comes to adults, this is ultimately about making smart and informed personal choices. When it comes to kids, this is about parents paying attention to what their kids watch and setting boundaries and limits.
TikTok poses problems. Let’s not wait for government to solve those problems for us.
