How the upcoming TikTok ban misses the point, what kids and teens need to undo the harms caused by exploitative apps, and why a device free camp needs to put it's head in the lions jaw in 2025
Late last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of TikTok Inc Vs The United States.
By all accounts, the oral arguments did not go in TikTok’s favor, and it seems more likely than not that the “ban” of TikTok will go into effect late this week on Jan 19th, as laid out by the law congress passed banning the app (this is the case as of the time of writing).
There is some nuance here – TikTok is unlikely to simply “go dark” in the US on the 19th, the app will probably still work on your phone, but you won’t be able to download it to a phone from the Apple or Google App stores. So no new users, no growth, which by the logic of the tech world and Wall St means it is all over.
There is also the outside possibility that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, spins off it’s US TikTok operation and sells it to an onshore US corporation, although this seems unlikely, given that TikTok’s algorithm seems to be best in class, and ByteDance is understandably reluctant to hand over world beating technology. (There is a rumor circulating that Elon Musk is trying to buy TikTok. In a world of bad outcomes, I can’t imagine too many worse than this. Oh wait, I know one. Mark Zuckerberg buying TikTok! Musk is a clown, Zuckerberg seems to be competent. He’d actually figure out how to make truckloads of money ruining lives, unlike Musk who just has a pile of money bigger than the deepest pit he can find to pour it into).
Whether the Supreme Court upholds the ban and TikTok goes away, whether the incoming administration tries some kind of executive order to stem the wounds inflicted by the ban, whether a sale goes through and the app continues operation without interference – none of that interests me as much as the motivation behind the ban in the first place.
The thing is, Congress got it completely wrong. To paraphrase Obi-Wan “this is not the ban we are looking for”.
In my mind, that is a record scratch moment. “Pinesy said what????”. But most of you don’t know me well enough to appreciate how deeply skeptical I am of the tech industry, how much of distaste I have for social media/attention economy rubbish. I’m like one of those poor souls for whom cilantro tastes foul, but instead of a delicious ingredient, I can’t stand algorithmically driven slop. I’ve spent the best part of the last decade researching and writing about the opportunity costs imposed by technology and social media, on adolescent wellbeing (and broader community and individual wellbeing, but mostly focused on the developmentally sensitive adolescent years). My long and winding, COVID delayed road to a PhD has been about these opportunity costs, and the costs are real, and very, very expensive. So it initially feels off to me to say “Congress messed up by banning TikTok’.
The reason for saying this is that Congress banned TikTok for the WRONG REASONS. Our Federal politicians acted out of concerns for “national security”. TikTok is a Chinese company, TikTok collects lots of data on users and chooses what content users see, China is a rival global power to the US, therefore TikTok is a national security threat is a rough outline of the argument I guess. I dunno, not my area of interest or expertise. (Although I do find it funny that a lot of TikTok users are apparently downloading other Chinese owned TikTok adjacent apps, including ones called RedNote and Lemon8, apparently as a middle finger to Congress. “You think you can stop us being influenced, and have our data owned, by the Chinese government? Hold my drink…” It feels very US in 2025 to kick an own goal and then celebrate.)
What Congress should have banned was the use of algorithmically driven apps that harvest user attention for profit. (Note - now we use a fancier term for predictive algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, but remember that AI is simply an evolution and rebrand of the predictive models that have been in use for quite some time. Yep, AI has a ton more resources poured into it, but the biggest change has been to let these models loose in the world, and let the public have at it. What could go wrong? Previously, algorithms were used primarily for relatively harmless purposes, like selling you more stuff, predicting which episode of “The Office” you wanted to see for the 8th time, or discriminating against minorities in job applications (is sarcasm still a thing?)).
There is reams of evidence of the harms being inflicted directly by the panoply of social media, video and gaming apps broadly called the attention economy. To be clear, it is not just TikTok that is harming people, multiple apps have been implicated, often by their own executives, in perpetuating harms. Kids of all ages, from toddlers to teens, are being negatively impacted, and now AI is on the scene, things look like they will only get worse (as an example, see the completely deranged and dangerous product, character.ai released to the public with exactly zero…cares…given to the harm it could inflict). These attention economy apps place user wellbeing very low on the list of priorities, with a race to grab market share being the number one goal - or to put it in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s own words “move fast and break things”. Unfortunately, the things that are being broken are our kids, teens, communities, and democracies.
Congress can, and should, erect real guardrails around these applications and platforms. The domains of harms, both direct and indirect, are literally the topic of PhD dissertations and books, and none of the truly concerning harms have anything to do with national security. I’m sure national security is an issue, but it’s not nearly as pressing as the harms these attention economy apps are causing on an ongoing basis. But instead of a comprehensive law aimed squarely at the worst, proven, ongoing harms that would encompass all attention economy apps and services, TikTok gets singled out because it was a foreign owned entity beating American companies at their own game. Honestly, it almost feels like the attitude of lawmakers was “if we’re going to onshore the harms, we need to onshore the profits”.
So with all that said, this is probably the worst time in the history of time to announce that we (MTC) is going to try our hand at creating content for TikTok (or whatever app springs up in its place on the 20th).
We haven’t changed our stance that social media sites are harmful to young people. In fact, we are more sure of this than ever. It’s not in question anymore. Social media and excessive tech use cause real harm.
What’s more, as of Fall 2024 we now have some rigorously obtained evidence that MTC is very beneficial for teenagers, along a range of measures. Teens who attend MTC are more adaptable and resilient, have a stronger mind body connection, sleep better, exercise better, feel a sense of belonging and make friends more effectively after a session at camp.
In fact, most of the measures showed improvements superior to those being achieved by in-person mental-health counseling. Camp is literally one of the best things any teen can do for superior mental health. How do we know? We did a study in 2024, involving over 200 campers. Sapien Labs, UC-San Diego, and Rady Childrens hospital ran the study, and results will be published over the coming months. Early analysis has been shared with us, and it confirms what we’ve observed for years. MTC is really, really good for teens.
So we know social media is harmful to teens and we know camp is exceptionally good for them. We also know that teens are spending vast amounts of time on social media, and TikTok is the leader of the pack. Some of our staff at the end of summer 2024 helped put this all together for me – what we offer is amazing and invaluable to teens. They NEED it. But they can’t access it if they don’t know about it. To reach the population who will benefit most from a summer at camp, we have to meet them where they are at.
So, we’re dipping our toes in the (nasty) water. Am I hoping against all evidence to the contrary that our political class will step up and take meaningful action to protect teenagers from the worst effects of social media, AI and other attention economy apps? Absolutely. Nothing would make me happier than our efforts being put into any social media campaign being undone. But until then, if that is where the people who need what we do are hanging out, we are going to try to reach them with our message. It’s a pretty simple one. Put down the screen. Get outside. With friends. Do stuff. But you have to put down the screen. Without that step, you fail to remove the block to the beneficial experiences so desperately needed.
It’s unrealistic to think kids and teens can experience life during the school year absent screens. But it’s not too much to think that maybe summers can be set aside for reset, recalibrating, and relearning the skills and habits that make us happy. We just need to get word to them. Hopefully we can do so with humor, good grace, and clarity of vision.
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