TikTok Ban: "OMG! Will Things Go Back To Normal Now?"

Learning from her friends that TikTok view counts were all zeros, and thinking that this was a signal that TikTok was about to be banned, my friend's 12-year-old daughter ran up to her mom and excitedly said, "OMG! Will things go back to normal now?"

A little background: this 12-year-old girl's parents do not allow her to use TikTok, which makes sense for obvious reasons. However, all of her friends and classmates are on TikTok, which is how she came to learn (via text message) that TikTok view counts were zeroed out.

Why was she gleeful? Because this otherwise normal, happy, 12-year-old girl is under immense peer pressure to be on TikTok. She understands why her parents won't let her use it, but that understanding does nothing to help her social situation; she's "not cool" and she's "not important" because she's not on TikTok. "Normal," in her mind, is a world that is not ruled by likes, views, and follower metrics. I do not want to be the one to break the news to her, that the world is now divided into two categories: people who are famous for 15-seconds, and people who aren't.

There is no reason to ban technology or innovation. There are, however, reasons to regulate its use. Why is every 12-year-old in this girl's world on TikTok? You need to be 13 years old to open an account. Where are their parents? Why do 12-year-olds have unrestricted access to the internet? Why would anyone think this is OK? Regulation starts at home.

Said differently, when you taught your child to cross the street, you took their hand, told them to look both ways, and when it looked safe, you walked purposefully (but not fast) across the street. Did you do this once? No. You did it countless times.

To a young mind, social media is as dangerous as crossing a busy street by yourself. Continuous adult supervision ("parenting") is absolutely required. If you want your kids to aspire to dance erotically in their underwear with the goal of accumulating 1.5 million views, I will not judge you. However, you need to be aware of the alignment of outcomes and incentives on TikTok (and all social media). If you are a parent of young children in 2020, this is technology you absolutely must become an expert in. You are the first generation of social media parents; it is a job that needs your undivided attention. -s

For more on this see a related article from Tech Crunch...

TikTok likes and views are broken as community worries over potential US ban
likes and views are broken for some unknown portion of the video app’s user base this afternoon. The impacted users are seeing a “zero” like count on TikTok posts, including their own and those of other app users, as well as “zero” views. The company has acknowledged the issue and says it’s working on a fix, but declined to explain what was causing the problem.

The TikTok Support account responded to the problem at 2:43 PM ET, noting it was working quickly to fix things, and then posted again at 3:35 PM ET to say a fix was in progress.

The company said that users should soon see their app experience return to normal as the problem was resolved on the company’s end.

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