CCP spying is just one of two good reasons for Australia to follow America’s push to ban TikTok | David Penberthy

There are two good reasons to rid Australia of TikTok, and communist spying is not even the main one, writes David Penberthy.

There are two questions surrounding the controversial app TikTok, the second of which might be the most important.

The first is whether we are at risk of handing all our personal data to the Chinese Communist Party, everything from our date of birth to our exact real time geolocation.

The second is how we are at risk of making ourselves completely stupid.

Maybe the two questions go hand-in-hand. Maybe answering yes to number two explains the willingness to do as required by question one.

I am not trying to sound overly judgmental.

If you’re into TikTok good luck to you. We all need an outlet. Some people like gardening, others like watching videos of people doing zany skits or pranking their friends.

But the extent to which this app has permeated people’s lives – predominantly young people’s lives – really is off the charts.

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My teenage son recently told me that his resolution for 2024 was to swear himself off TikTok.

He is about to turn 18, and almost legally free to do what he likes, but I was proud that of his own volition he decided to delete the app for the simple reason that he was spending so much time watching content which was 90 per cent garbage.

The promise that something good might be just around the corner is an alluring one. When I was a few years older than my son and living with mates in a share house, we would habitually stay up until 4am or 5am watching the music program Rage, fuelled by the hope that they might play another good video before we finally hit the hay.

The twin evil of TikTok is that it lures users into watching it for great lengths of time, even though most of it is rubbish.

There is a fascinating 2021 study by Brown University in Providence Rhode Island which addresses the question: why is TikTok so addictive?

The paper concludes that unlike other forms of social media, the rapid-fire, scrolling nature of the content combined with the use of algorithms and ‘likes’ to discern user’s tastes makes the app almost irresistible.

It states that the liking of content among the user’s groups of friends also feeds into their sense of self-worth, unleashing the dopamine rush that comes from feeling popular.

“’Likes’ are gratifying in multiple ways – it feels good to receive likes from other people, and it also feels good to give ‘likes’ to other people in the same way that it feels good to give people gifts,” the paper states.

TikTok could soon be banned in the USA. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

“For both forms, the presence of the like button allows instant gratification, which drives habitual use and addiction through positive reinforcement.”

The report states that the entertainment or comic value of the content on TikTok only partially explains its popularity.

“The platform’s success is also heavily influenced by elements of the app itself, and it has been argued that certain app features drive the formation and sustenance of addictions to the platform. Recent reports reveal that users spend an average of 46 minutes per day on the app and open it eight times daily; considering the maximum length of videos is 15 seconds, they may watch upwards of 180 videos per day on average.”

As my recovering son would tell you, 46 minutes is a fair chunk out of your day. And given that 46 minutes is merely the average, there’s plenty of users out there who are spending well above that amount of time per day watching these often daft videos.

Why does any of this matter?

It matters because there is now a mountain of evidence that the more time you spend watching this stuff, the less intelligent you will become.

The Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics released findings this month showing the links between time spent watching content on devices and time spent learning new words. The report did not look specifically at TikTok, rather the time-sapping, attention-consuming power of all screen time, especially in the context of the very young.

Now if we are honest, most parents (including this one) will admit that the old iPad has often been used as a babysitting device or a distraction after a fight has ensued during a backyard soccer match.

The latest findings showed that screen time could be robbing the average three-year-old of 1,100 adult words, 840 vocalisations and 194 conversations a day.

This is hugely important at a time when kid’s brains are developing.

And it’s not just the three year olds who are in the frame here. There’s plenty of words out there and we only know so many of them.

Every minute any of us spend on any device is usually robbing us of the chance to learn something new.

And here’s another question: Are the people who invented TikTok spending as much time as we are using TikTok?

From everything I have read, the Chinese education system is much more focused on traditional literacy and numeracy and the sciences than ours.

Chinese familial structures are more authoritarian than ours, with children under no illusion as to who’s in charge, whereas here in Australia it’s much more laissez faire.

One of my best mates lives in China. He’s an Aussie, married to a Chinese woman, and their daughter is only nine years old but can now beat him at chess.

This is no mean feat for her, as my mate is the smartest bloke I know, as evidenced by the fact that he lectures in pure maths at a Chinese university, and does it in Mandarin.

Chess? Pfft. I reckon I could beat her at Mario Kart, with our old Wii being one of the multitude of devices festooning our home.

Forget our privacy and our metadata.

In TikTok, we have a highly successful communist conspiracy aimed at making us all dumb.

Originally published as CCP spying is just one of two good reasons for Australia to follow America’s push to ban TikTok | David Penberthy