?How TikTok is Destroying the Human Race
Tick tock bills itself as the last sunny corner of the internet, but many people see a dark side. Beneath the app's surface lies incredibly advanced artificial intelligence that has learned what people like with stunning impact. Tick Tock signed up a billion users in half the time it took Facebook. The West has always accused China of copying technological advances, but now Silicon Valley is rushing to mimic the Chinese app in response to tick Tock Short videos YouTube introduced shorts and Instagram released reels. Unlike Instagram, where your feed consists of photos and videos from people you follow. Tick Tock relies on a strategy of recommendations first. You find yourself watching videos from people you never chose to watch, who you don't follow. It's what Tick Tock believes will most appeal to you. Imagine the effect of binging on an endless stream of 15 or 32nd videos for an hour and a half a day. The average amount of time users spends on tick tock. That dopamine rush is addictive. And a study from the technical University of Denmark found that the constant stream of information from social media can shorten our attention span over time, and that this effect occurs not only on social media, but also across diverse domains, including books, web searches, movie popularity and more. In other words, a shorter attention span impacts every aspect of your life. When was the last time you sat through an entire movie at home? Can you even bear to watch older movies that are slower paced? Or worse.
ATTENTION SPAN
what happens if our society is filled with people who lack the focus to think things through or complete projects that take a lot of time in the way that TV news in the seventies shortened reports to one minute 30 seconds to keep the attention of the television audience. Tick Tock is now shortening our attention span from minutes to seconds. Anything longer isn't worth our time unless we're really, really interested in the subject matter. Does a 30-minute YouTube video now feel like an unbearably long documentary? Our addiction to the screen is literally damaging our brains. Multiple studies have shown that those addicted to gaming on the Internet have a reduced volume of gray matter in their brain. Gray matter has a large number of neurons present, which allows it to process information in the brain. So, spending too much time on your phone is literally causing your brain tissue to atrophy. Much of the damage occurs in the frontal lobe, the area that largely determines success in life, be it academics, career or relationships. Then there's the issue of the quality of the videos you're watching. There's been a lot of talk lately that tick tock in the US is different from the version shown in China, where Tick Tock is known as Douyin. A user wrote on Quora that its tick tock feed is filled with teenagers doing stupid things, whereas his douyin feed is filled with self-improvement, Photography, travel, calligraphy, life hacks, trivia, and of course, cute dog cat videos. By the way, in China, those aged 14 and under are limited to using Douyin for 40 minutes a day and are blocked from using it between 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.. The difference between the two tiktoks is stark. As social media expert Tristan Harris told 60 Minutes. "They make their domestic version a spinach version of Tik Tok while they've shipped the opium version to the rest of the world."
DIFFERNCE IN CAREER ASPIRATION OF CHINESE AND AMERICAN CHILDREN
Perhaps that speaks to the difference in career aspirations of Chinese and American children. In China, Most kids dream of becoming an astronaut. In America, most kids aspire to be social media influencers. Toward the end of Donald Trump's presidency, he tried and failed to ban TikTok in the US or force the Beijing company that owns it "Bytedance" to sell Tiktok's American arm to a domestic owner.
PRIVACY ISSUES
The most frequent criticism of TikTok is privacy issues. China can demand whatever information it likes from companies based in its country. A damning report from BuzzFeed in June 2022 claimed US user data was repeatedly accessed from TikTok staff in China. Tiktok has always insisted that information from the US is stored in the US, which right now is on the servers of American company "Oracle." And at a recent New York Times event, its CEO denied handing over Americans data to China. But Washington isn't buying it. In December, lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation. That could ban TikTok in the US after the FBI warned it could be used by China for spying. The Senate has voted to ban TikTok from all government issued phones. As of this video, it still has to pass the House before going to President Biden for approval. Tiktok is growing exponentially. It was the most downloaded app in 2021 and remains on top in 2022. Although it may .have started off as a dancing app, it is increasingly becoming a news source for Gen Z.
