Add poor media literacy to TikTok fears

The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok after the House of Representatives attached the measure to an emergency spending bill on April 17, 2024. The House voted on each of the four components of the bill, and the one affecting TikTok passed 360-58 on April 20, 2024. The packaging is likely to improve the bill’s chances in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

The bill would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a US company or face a ban in the country. The company has said it will fight any effort to force a sale.

The proposed legislation was motivated by a set of national security concerns. For one, ByteDance can be required to assist the Chinese Communist Party in gathering intelligence, according to the Chinese National Intelligence Law. In other words, the data TikTok collects can, in theory, be used by the Chinese government.

Furthermore, TikTok’s popularity in the United States, and the fact that many young people get their news from the platform – one-third of Americans under the age of 30 – turns it into a potent instrument for Chinese political influence.

Indeed, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently claimed that TikTok accounts run by a Chinese propaganda arm of the government targeted candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022, and the Chinese Communist Party might attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 in order to sideline critics of China and magnify US social divisions.

To these worries, proponents of the legislation have appended two more arguments: It’s only right to curtail