Psychologists, psychiatrists and social media experts have long warned of the dangers of device and social media addiction to the brains and psyches of young people, especially teenagers. Perhaps the most addictive platform on the internet is TikTok, owned and controlled by ByteDance, a Chinese company in part controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Fourteen U.S. states have sued TikTok for knowingly using the application’s addictive qualities to ensnare children and harm their mental health. At the Davos World Economic Forum last month, Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the author of “The Anxious Generation,” said, “TikTok is severely damaging children in the Western world.”
Beyond the physical and psychological harm TikTok is causing to young people, the app’s content puts U.S. security at risk by providing the Chinese Communist government with a propaganda megaphone directly targeting 170 million American users. Beijing is able to use this unparalleled access to young Americans to erode public support for U.S. foreign policy, to build support for the positions of China, Russia and other U.S. adversaries, and to sow confusion and division within the American public on both foreign and domestic issues.
The power of TikTok to succeed in those subversive aims can be seen in microcosm in the much smaller society of Taiwan. With a population of less than 24 million, Taiwan has been subjected to a concerted campaign of misinformation and disinformation as part of Beijing’s all-encompassing effort to prepare Taiwan’s population for a Chinese takeover.
In the decades since Taiwan became a flourishing democracy, starting with its first direct presidential election in 1996, the Taiwanese public made clear it had no interest in accepting rule by China’s Communist dictators, having freed itself of the anti-communist dictatorship of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In 2010, at a Chinese Embassy reception I attended, a Chinese official made the case to me for early military action against Taiwan, that time was not on China’s side. Older Taiwanese residents who see themselves as Chinese, he argued, were dying out every day, while babies were being born who will know only a Taiwan identity.
The resistance to any form of unification with Communist China, which has never governed Taiwan, included opposition to Beijing’s proposal for “one country, two systems.” That illusory formulation was promised Hong Kong by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s until the totalitarian boot came crashing down in 2020 and 2021. Witnessing those tragic events in Hong Kong cemented the Taiwan majority’s commitment to protect its de facto independence from China.
But TikTok has potentially changed the demographic and political equation in fundamental ways, as the Taiwanese babies whose future loyalties the Chinese Embassy official worried about a decade and a half ago are now teenagers with access to all forms of social media, including the Beijing-controlled, seductively mind-manipulating platform.
An in-depth report by Kathrin Hille in the Financial Times revealed how today’s Taiwanese teenagers with intense exposure to TikTok have developed perceptions of their own country as somehow responsible for “provoking” China’s aggressive actions toward it.
TikTok’s relative success in winning young hearts and minds reflects its avoidance of the heavy-handed approach more typical of communist and fascist propaganda organs in favor of lighter, subtler, even entertaining techniques. With “music the way in,” young American audiences are as susceptible as the Taiwanese to the seemingly innocuous lure.
The technique need not be limited to a younger audience. Take, for example, a video of President Trump swaying to “YMCA.” Perhaps it is one of the reasons Trump, having called for a ban on Tik Tok in his first term, now says “I have a warm spot in my heart” for the platform. He believes that, thanks to the advice of his youngest son, Barron, it played a major role in enabling him to reach millions of young voters in 2024.
At some point, hopefully, Trump will recognize that his first instinct was right, that TikTok is effectively a second China virus, potentially even more deadly than COVID, and he will help get this one out of the country expeditiously and permanently.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.
