Devotees of TikTok protest passage of House bill that would ban the popular video app if its China-based owner doesn’t sell it to a U.S. company.
Two years ago, I decided to start a social media account with a medical school classmate to answer common questions we got from our patients. “Is my back pain from kidney disease? Should I worry about my cold lasting more than a week?” Our patients were finding medical information websites like WebMD more confusing and anxiety-provoking, often needlessly spending hours in waiting rooms to see us.
TikTok quickly became our platform of choice. It was by far the easiest to record, edit and share our content. The video format enabled us to talk to people as we often do to our patients, rather than condense complex information into texts or pictures. On TikTok, we felt we could be our authentic selves rather than idealized versions while having the most impact; more people watched our videos and followed us on the platform than on YouTube, Instagram or Facebook — combined.
When I heard that the House had passed legislation a few weeks ago that could potentially ban TikTok, it surprised me that my immediate reaction was not anger like many content creators and users but rather deep ambivalence.
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I know firsthand that TikTok is an effective way for people to amplify their voices. Although TikTok started in 2016 as a platform for mostly short-form videos focused on dance and comedy, now content of all types thrives on it. A 94-year-old grandma influencer garnered tens of millions of followers by comically depicting her life, which often involves satirical spats with ladies in the senior center. Rep. Jeff Jackson, a freshman Democrat from North Carolina, built a large following by succinctly and clearly explaining what is happening in Congress. Keith Lee reviews and supports restaurants, many of them Black-owned, which can instantly create a line around the block for them.
These creators have built an audience, even livelihoods, with the content they create on TikTok. Plenty of people find TikTok and content on the platform valuable, so much so that some have even unwisely resorted to threatening members of Congress over the proposed ban.
Yet, despite the substantial value TikTok brings me as a creator and user, I have reservations about the app’s place in our society and my life.
Alongside entertaining or informative content, TikTok has been shown to push harmful mental health information to children. Conspiracy theories generated by artificial intelligence are reaching millions of people. Medical and political misinformation abounds in TikTok.
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Personally, TikTok's highly targeted and engaging videos — most with no lasting value — can hijack my attention for hours, feeding on my dopamine rewards circuit. After mindlessly scrolling on TikTok, I find myself less at ease, less patient with my young kids and wife, and generally in a foul mood. I call TikTok my “anti-meditation.”
When my friends who are not on TikTok ask me about it, my usual response is, “If you are not already on it, don’t get on it.”
I have gone weeks without opening the app. I have set a TikTok-specific screen time limit on my phone, which can be effective, but only sometimes. Yet, when I feel compelled to share something, I inevitably open the app because, regardless of how I feel about it, TikTok is where people, especially the young, consume content and search for information.
It is precisely TikTok’s ubiquitous presence on people’s phones, and the potential for the app to share sensitive personal data with the Chinese government, that concerns lawmakers. However, I believe that the proposed TikTok ban is a temporary fix, and we would be better off making all social media platforms secure and safe.
First, TikTok is not the only popular app owned by a Chinese company. For example, Temu, a popular discount shopping app, faces a multistate class-action lawsuit for allegedly collecting a wide array of information including fingerprint data, precise locations and text messages (Temu has denied the allegations).
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Moreover, data privacy concerns are not exclusive to TikTok and Temu. Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, and Google have recently settled lawsuits over allegations of privacy violations and sharing user data with third parties. Moreover, one can easily and legally find sensitive personal information such as address, age, phone number and relatives on websites like truepeoplefinder.com.
Instead of playing whack-a-mole with tech companies over privacy and data security, it would be more prudent to enact and enforce data privacy law at the federal level similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Furthermore, we need a federal approach to curbing misinformation and negative mental health impacts on all social media platforms. We can follow the example of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires companies to restrict illicit content.
As for me, I am not so sure how much longer I will remain active on TikTok. But I hope the decision is my choice and not because it is banned.
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Jason Bae is an urgent care physician practicing in Palo Alto. He is a senior scholar at Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. He runs @YourDoctorFriends on TikTok.
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