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I guess the whole argument fell flat for me because I am wholly unconvinced by this main premise, that tiktok is definitely bad for people.
First and most ridiculously, we can't seriously believe that 'damaging fads' like tiktok challenges are a serious source of concern. Kids filming themselves doing something silly hardly seems like a phenomenon that will lead to the breakdown of American society. At worst some of the most dangerous fads kill a particularly stupid kid or two on average every year, maybe. So the Chinese have created a superweapon that works by... exerting an extremely slight eugenic effect on the american population? Lol. Is the idea that kids should be studying instead of doing tiktok challenges?? Baffled by this point.
More reasonably, there is the claim that social media might make us more anxious. I was under the impression that sites like facebook and instagram might do this, because people compare themselves unfairly to the 'highlights' of other people's lives which make up the typical facebook feed, and thus feel anxious that they are not having as successful, exciting, etc. lives as their friends. I was not aware that tiktok had this effect. However, if I was to give the original argument the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that tiktok use indeed could play a part in causing anxiety, I'm still not convinced of this in itself as a deleterious effect. What actual downsides (in the sense of, geopolitically measurable downsides, if the assertion is that tiktok is a 'chinese superweapon' the intention or effect of which is presumably to influence geopolitics) is anxiety actually associated with? Anxiety is a potentially less-enjoyable subjective state experienced by an individual. But are individuals with anxiety for example measurably less productive citizens? Why isn't it plausible that they could be more productive citizens? Because it certainly seems that way to me. My intuitive perception is that hippies are the type of person you get when you lower the anxiety in the equation, and people who are struggling harder to get ahead in the rat race are the type you get when you turn the dial up a bit. Either way, I'd like to see an explanation or some data that would suggest societies with greater proportions of 'anxious' individuals are actually meaningfully less geopolitically competitive than less anxious societies.
Finally, there is the assertion that social media can both 'shrink' and 'monopolize' our attention. I'll admit I have no rebuttal for the claim that any sufficiently entertaining product could be a superweapon in the sense that it could 'monopolize' our attention, making people want to use it so much that they forsake other productive things they would have done otherwise. It is entirely possibly that tiktok is this sort of entertainment product. However, I suppose I ultimately doubt that tiktok will really cause people to use it instead of i.e. going to work. As to whether or not tiktok will 'shrink' our attention, I'm not skeptical of this but rather of how bad it is. I'm sure tiktok could cause attention spans to go down. But again, could someone point me to what actual geopolitically measurable loss will be incurred from this? Perhaps attention spans could shrink so small that people will no longer be able to appreciate instances of long-form of high culture such as historically important novels. Will this help China win the new cold war? Is the idea that maybe fewer people will become geopolitically important human resources like i.e. engineers, because they won't have the attention span to study the required material? Attention spans have already been declining for decades, over this timespan has the US produced fewer engineers per capita?
The point that China themselves is demanding domestic censorship of tiktok, or that we should generally appreciate their understanding of which social ills to prioritize ameliorating, is wholly unconvincing as well. Aside from the fact that china is already known for seeking complete control of the online information to which their citizens have access, they are also known for their leadership buying the claims of moral panics. A few months ago they passed a law highly restricting video game time for children under 18, and a few months before that they banned effeminate-seeming men from appearing on TV or being featured on other forms of popular media. Rather than smart, agile avoidance of new potential vectors of social decline, these seem more to me like the laws your asian friend's grandpa might pass if he was the dictator of a large country, i.e. motivated by the vague sentiment that these things are bad rather than an actual analysis that video game addiction or the feminizing of your nations men are serious social problems. Plenty of studies show that playing video games more than the average person is even associated with higher IQ or other benefits, but of course the most visible effects of gaming to an elderly asian man are probably that he thinks his grandson plays too much instead of studying, and that a small portion of people get addicted to the point of actual productivity loss.
Overall I guess I just think the whole 'social media bad' thing might be a moral panic itself. There are plenty of ways to easily criticize of social media use right now by pointing to things like declining attention spans. But honestly I bet there are also plenty of unexamined upsides, too. Reading books for pleasure was once widely regarded as a waste of time (before other forms of media were created to take its place as the 'time-waster' scapegoat). Now reading books is widely regarded as one of the best ways to become smarter. Who's to say social media use won't eventually be this in time? It almost seems to me intuitive that things that shower you with cognitive stimulus like the constant stream of information through a tiktok feed could be an intelligence-increasing activity. To me the jury's still out.
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