Will TikTok Handicap an Entire Generation?

Since hitting the app store in 2017, millions have downloaded TikTok, the “social” video media platform. It’s since become the most popular app ever created. Instagram is

adapting its algorithms and layout to emulate their looming rival, and kids too young to read are scrolling through videos that range from the ridiculous to the crass to the

semi-pornographic. A friend of mine, who no longer has the app, commented that when he did have it downloaded, he spent hours on it before at night before falling asleep. “It

would be ten or eleven o’clock and then I’d check my watch it would be, like, four a.m,” he said. “It was bad.” TikTok is owned by the Chinese video-sharing company

Douyin. While many have pointed out that the app poses a potential security threat, allowing China to mine American data and information, there may be an equally sinister and

evident threat that’s simply destroying us from within. And that might be the end goal.   A writer who goes by “Gurwinder” on his Substack page recently posted a detailed

and insightful account of why TikTok has been so successful, what it’s doing to our minds, and further, how it could handicap an entire generation. He calls TikTok “a weapon of

mass distraction,” writing, Advances in the understanding of positive reinforcement, driven mostly by people trying to get us to click on links, have now made it possible to

consistently give people on the other side of the world dopamine hits at scale. As such, pleasure is now a weapon; a way to incapacitate an enemy as surely as does pain. And the

first pleasure-weapon of mass destruction may just be a little app on your phone called TikTok.” TikTok is a Chinese Superweapon – by Gurwinder – The Prism (substack.com)

While warfare in the past was all about inflicting pain, influential technologies like TikTok make their conquest through pleasure and “positive reinforcement.” If you’ve

read or have encountered the synopsis of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, such language will sound eerily familiar. In Huxley’s estimation, state powers

would not have to rule by force but by hacking human psychology and making us pleasure-machines—infants who just want more milk. TikTok is specifically designed to “figure you

out” and generate video feeds that keep you watching. You might protest and say that while Tiktok is certainly a distraction, isn’t YouTube and Netflix too? What’s unique

about Tiktok? It’s a fair observation, and one that I’ve wrestled with, too. Instagram feels like a close second to TikTok in addiction, especially now that it’s trying to