TikTok is aware of the risks of its app on teenagers... but business is business

According to internal documents revealed by an American public radio station, although TikTok's teams had identified the harmful effects of the platform on young users, they had limited preventive measures for fear of seeing its popularity decline.

According to a report by NPR and Kentucky Public Radio, court documents suggest that TikTok executives are aware of the app's potential dangers for teens. The documents, mentioned in a subpoena issued by the Kentucky Attorney General, are part of a lawsuit filed by 13 states and Washington DC, accusing theTikTok app of harming the mental health of young users. According to the published excerpts, the company's internal research shows that " compulsive use correlates with a range of negative mental health effects such as loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, depth of conversation, empathy and increased anxiety ". Note that Public Radio reconstructed the internal communications before a state judge ordered them removed from the public record.

TikTok values traffic over user well-being

There's nothing new under the sun, as TikTok's research corroborates numerous independent studies pointing to the harmful effect of social networks on young people's brains. But in this case, it's the platform's failure to intervene that has set things alight. Indeed, while TikTok has implemented features to limit young users' screen time, including parental controls and a one-hour timeout, the documents suggest that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has not sought to improve its tools despite their limited effectiveness. Indeed, the features developed would have reduced usage by an average of just one and a half minutes per day. Worse still, the documents reveal that the media coverage surrounding these features would actually have been aimed at " improving public confidence in its platform. " " Our objective is not to reduce the time spent on the platform.reportedly wrote a TikTok project manager.

China denies that TikTok is a propaganda tool

Calling the publication of the trial excerpts " highly irresponsible ", a TikTok spokesperson regretted that public radio had " selected misleading quotes and taken outdated documents out of context to misrepresent the platform's commitment to community safety. "

The leak of these documents comes at a time when TikTok, the application favored by young people, risks being banned in the United States (if it remains the property of the Chinese company ByteDance). According to the US government, TikTok is accused of being a " propaganda tool in the service of China ", allowing Beijing (among other things) to " collect data and spy on users ". Accusations that both China and the company categorically deny.

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