TikTok Hysteria Returns: AGs Launch Mental Health Impact Inquiry

While the repeated freak outs over TikTok tend to be bipartisan, they're often motivated by different things. The Trumpist right generally doesn't like TikTok because Chinese people made a product that's better and more successful than U.S. tech platforms (the latter point being obvious if you spend thirty seconds comparing the Facebook/Instagram and TikTok video platforms).

This is dressed up under all manner of other pretenses (see: Trump trying to offload the whole company to his friends at Oracle and Walmart under the pretense he was just suddenly and uncharacteristically, super concerned about consumer privacy).

Then of course there's another segment of TikTok hysteria common on the right and left, which, as we've seen throughout history when new tech is involved, requires tearing your hair out about a parade of perceived horribles being caused by something you don't actually understand.

The latest example of that segment of TikTok hyperventilation can be seen in a new multi-state AG investigation into weather TikTok is causing mental and physical health issues in teens:

Today, Attorney General Maura Healey launched a nationwide investigation into whether TikTok is designing, operating, and promoting its social media platform to children, teens, and young adults in a manner that causes or exacerbates physical and mental health harms. Attorneys general nationwide are examining whether the company violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.

Data clearly proving that social media is actively the cause of teenage depression is hard to come by. Especially in a country where mass shooting, terrible or nonexistent mental health care, corruption, shitty parenting, climate change, income inequality, racism, and countless other factors contribute to the ebb and flow of mental illness rates.

The AG's announcement doesn't really explain the need for the investigation (especially the claim TikTok causes physical harm"), but does make it sound like it's already effectively understood that it's social media that's directly responsible for the entirety of teenage ills:

As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure, and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental wellbeing," said AG Healey. State attorneys general have an imperative to protect young people and seek more information about how companies like TikTok are influencing their daily lives."

As history keeps showing us, whatever technology is new and innately poorly understood, it is blamed for age-old problems because it's simpler than fixing the real, underlying, and often complicated issues. That's not to say that teens aren't experiencing body image issues or other problems due to unrealistic portrayals of human beings - or that we shouldn't research those issues and try to fix them.

But those problems already existed in arenas like traditional media and advertising. They're simply not specific to social media, or having a cellphone (also routinely blamed as the cause of teen depression). And there's always a select certainty that comes along with these moral panics that don't really incorporate the concept that technologies can have both positive and negative effects.

For example, not that long ago there was a massive freak out over claims that TikTok was causing a huge spike in diagnosis' of Tourette Syndrome among teenage girls. Only later (after the din of false headlines had died out) did folks point out that this likely wasn't happening at all.

In reality, there was a spike in referrals for those curious if they had Tourette, caused by either increased awareness of what Tourette was due to a lot of famous influencers on TikTok having the disorder (the building of awareness itself being a good thing leading to more people getting help), or by disorder tourism and mimicry by young adults trying to feel more connected or popular (not good, but not a specific TikTok problem).

It would be nice if there was a singular, easy answer that would immediately make the planet's young adults feel happy, confident in their bodies, and less depressed. But again, there's no hard evidence that TikTok is the singular cause of these problems. Which leaves you wondering: in an era with so many massive, obvious challenges (climate, hunger, corruption, COVID, war, abysmal mental health care), is a big inquiry like this genuinely the best source of our consistently strained resources?