Should the US ban TikTok? Can it? A cybersecurity expert explains the risks the app poses and the challenges to blocking it

So as an average user, should you worry? Again, it is unclear what data ByteDance is collecting and if it can harm an individual. I believe the most significant risks are to people in power, whether it is political power or within a company. Their data and information could be used to gain access to other data or potentially compromise the organizations they are associated with.

 TikTok Is Flooded With Health Myths. These Creators Are Pushing Back.

Meet the medical experts fighting bogus science, one “stitch” at a time.

 TikTok is the health consultant of choice for an awful lot of Americans

Influencers are seen as more accessible than health professionals by many consumers, according to a new survey.

1 Billion TikTok Users Understand What Congress Doesn’t

Of the social-media platforms around today, TikTok is the likeliest to represent the future. Its user base is mostly young people. But if you look for TikTok in news coverage, you’re more likely to find it in the lifestyle, culture, or even food section than you are on the front page.

A Brief History Of TikTok And Its Rise To Popularity

In August 2018, ByteDance released the global version of Douyin, TikTok. One of the main draws of TikTok is its elaborate algorithm that quickly figures users’ tastes and preferences based on how they engage with the app.

A TikTok Ban May Be Just the Beginning

If the video app is blocked by federal authorities, it could be the beginning of the end for mega-popular Chinese apps in the U. S.—and for China’s ambitions to build a software-driven economy.

Doctors Argue TikTok is Bad for Your Mental Health

The algorithm behind TikTok uses minutes and hours of view time as an indicator of viewer interest rather than engagement metrics like clicks and “likes”. This brings more extreme views and reactions to the fore and creates more of an emotional response in the viewer.

How TikTok Reads Your Mind

If you’re among the billion people (literally!) who spend time on TikTok every month, you’re familiar with the app as 2021’s central vehicle for youth culture and online culture generally. It displays an endless stream of videos and, unlike the social media apps it is increasingly displacing, serves more as entertainment than as a connection to friends.

Is TikTok The New Doc?

On TikTok, one of the most popular health searches is for mental health support. Unfortunately, in analyzing 500 TikTok videos tagged #mentalhealthtips, research found that a staggering 83% of the mental health guidance was misleading at best—and, in some cases, could be downright damaging.

Is TikTok The Next Social Media Frontier for Medicine?

In an age where the use of social media is becoming more pervasive in our lives, the medical community should consider harnessing the unique characteristics of TikTok to deliver information to patients as well as for targeted training for medical education.

Opinion: TikTok shows that social media can be good for mental health

When social media is used properly, people are becoming more aware of mental health issues and how to deal with them.

The TikTok Hearing Revealed That Congress Is the Problem

IN ONE SENSE, today’s US congressional hearing on TikTok was a big success: It revealed, over five hours, how desperately the United States needs national data-privacy protections—and how lawmakers believe, somehow, that taking swipes at China is a suitable alternative.

Tics and TikTok: Can social media trigger illness?

The hallmark of these conditions is that multiple people within a social group develop similar, medically inexplicable, and often bizarre symptoms. In some cases, those affected believe they have been exposed to something dangerous, such as a toxin or contagion, although thorough investigation finds none.

TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

Facebook is trying to copy TikTok, but this strategy may well signal the end of these legacy platforms.

TikTok Is (Still) Evil

It is my considered opinion that TikTok, a fast-growing Chinese social-media app, is evil. And not just because it seems uniquely manipulative of user attention at the algorithm level, tracking user keystrokes and even the amount of time a user lingers on a certain video. Or because, as a result of a soulless algorithmic manipulation excessive even by modern standards, users can be led down dark rabbit holes of drug- and sex-related content very quickly.

TikTok Is the New King of Social Media. Now What?

The pre-TikTok era of social media was a genuine, full-spectrum privacy disaster. It was, however, a disaster constructed by domestic companies and exported to the rest of the world (although notably not to China). Digital privacy is a notoriously difficult concept around which to mobilize politically. Nationalism, less so.

TikTok: The good, the bad and the ugly

Friend or foe to people with a disability? We peek under the covers of viral social media platform, TikTok

What Makes TikTok so Addictive?

Undoubtedly, the appeal and entertainment value of content posted on TikTok is a major factor in its popularity. Users are intrigued by videos posted by others and may recreate these videos or publish original content. However, the platform’s success is also heavily influenced by elements of the app itself, and it has been argued that certain app features drive the formation and sustenance of addictions to the platform.

What TikTok does to your mental health: ‘It’s embarrassing we know so little’

Nearly six in 10 teenagers count themselves as daily users of the app yet little is known about the impacts on the brain.

What We Lose If We Actually Ban TikTok

Life without TikTok—or, at least, life in the United States without easy access to the video-sharing platform that more than a third of us are now hooked on—what would it be like?

Why Countries Are Trying to Ban TikTok

Governments have expressed concerns that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, may endanger sensitive user data.

Why the nature of TikTok could exacerbate a worrisome social media trend

In recent years, parents and policymakers alike have started to focus on the negative effects social media can have on young people, on everything from introducing them to hate groups to encouraging eating disorders. So we want to tell you about another debate that's emerging around what some think might be a new threat, the self-diagnosing of mental health issues. There doesn't seem to be any hard data on this, but if you spend any time on TikTok or Reddit or other platforms, you can easily see videos documenting mental health symptoms - sometimes from health professionals, often not.