Tova podcast: ‘I would never give it to anybody I loved’ - parents warned against Tiktok

Friday, 17 May 2024

Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent and host of the weekly political podcast, Tova. Listen to the latest episode, TikTok: The antisocial network?

Dr Samantha Marsh’s children weren’t allowed social media growing up and she doesn’t use the TikTok app herself unless she has to as part of her research.

“I look at my own children and think if they had been on technology for their childhood, they wouldn't be the kids they are today. And that just breaks my heart because we've done this, unknowingly, to a generation of kids.”

Marsh is a senior research fellow at University of Auckland with a focus on the impact of social media on youth mental health.

TikTok and social media for kids

She tells Stuff’s Tova podcast that TikTok is dangerous “particularly to kids, and I struggle to understand how people can see kids on something like TikTok and not see what it's doing to them”.

Marsh says the short reel videos interfere with attention spans and research shows they create structural changes in the brain that mimic what you would see in people with addictions and people who started drinking alcohol young.

What’s your policy on allowing your kids to engage with social media? Let us know in the comments.

It also gives an easy fix of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain associated with reward, which drives us to do things - thus forming addictive behaviour.

“So you work hard on a test, you get a good mark and you get a tiny hit of dopamine and you want to do that again. But now we're in a situation where nobody's doing any work, you're watching these short videos, you're getting your dopamine hit over and over again, and your brain is kind of becoming used to that.”

TikTok’s algorithm makes it unique because you don’t make deliberate choices about the content you’re seeing. The algorithm is powered by AI and creates hyper-personalised collections of endless, scrollable videos based on what you’ve liked, shared, rewatched or stopped watching.

“It is watching you,” says Marsh.

She explains that researchers who created fictional accounts pretending to be 13-year-olds and then watched what happened with their feeds over 30 minutes, found that within 2.6 minutes - about 150 seconds - those ‘13-year-olds’ were being shown suicidal content and a lot about eating disorders and mental health. They were being shown this content every 39 seconds.

“So very quickly, it sends kids to these videos that romanticise and encourage self-harm and depressive thinking, and there’s also just some really depraved content on there,” says Marsh.

A video going round a couple of years ago showed a young girl dancing, before cutting to a man being brutally murdered. “Tiktok pulled it but millions of kids had seen it. And once you've seen stuff like that, you can't unsee it,” Marsh adds.

In another study, a group of teenagers were put in a room together and asked about social media. “A quarter of them said that they'd seen people being beheaded and things like that… there’s really dark stuff that I just don't think parents understand is on there.”

Asked what parents and families should do Marsh is emphatic.

“Kids shouldn’t be on social media, but in particular, kids should not be on TikTok. I cannot stress that enough. I would never give this to anybody that I loved. And I would never wish it on anybody.”

Data harvesting and China

Robert Potter won’t have TikTok on his phone either but for different reasons.

The cyber-security expert is the co-founder of Australian company Internet 2.0, which cracked the code to TikTok and revealed just how much data it’s collecting from us - and how different that is to what TikTok says it’s collecting.

“TikTok was adamant that it didn't collect location data, and to this day still is in public, but when you look at the source code… the app queries the location of the user regularly, they actually called it super location in the app, which is not just where you are in terms of GPS, but also your altitude.”

He says the app, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has been used to track journalists who were reporting on TikTok.

“So if you can't even trust the app not to misuse the functionality, what chance have we got stopping the Chinese government from using that functionality?”

Potter says the app also collects all of the contacts in the phone, “so you can imagine just how dangerous that is for a Member of Parliament who may have, you know, incredibly private, mobile phone numbers on their phone. And sharing that with the application poses a significant risk.”

In New Zealand, TikTok was banned and removed from all parliamentary devices in 2023. Private phones with TikTok are forbidden from joining the main corporate wi-fi system that services all of the parliament precinct.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is a keen TikToker, posting everything from tours of his ninth floor Beehive office to his morning skin care regime.

“We have a set of protocols that we use, I’m on TikTok myself but I have a set of protocols around that, to make sure that we're managing our information securely and that there is no risk there.”

Asked if New Zealand believes that TikTok’s data is being passed on, accessed or manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party, the Prime Minister told the Tova podcast he had no comment.

Potter says there are ways to mitigate the cyber-security risk by having a second phone without contacts in it.

Luxon wouldn’t tell Stuff if he had a separate TikTok burner phone, “I’m not going to get into that.”

Potter says the bigger consideration for world leaders and politicians using TikTok is whether they want to be communicating to a community which excludes some people.

“If you're a dissident from China who's living in New Zealand, if you're a minority from China who lives in New Zealand, if you've spoken out against China and you live in New Zealand, you're not welcome on that platform. And I think there is something negative about taking part in an ecosystem that normalises censorship and exclusion like that.”

TikTok ban

The United States has issued an ultimatum to ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company: sell the app or face a ban in the US.

Potter says if the United States does move to ban TikTok next year, he expects New Zealand and Australia will follow suit.

“I think the settlement in the United States will be probably determinative for a lot of other countries… it would be odd for countries like Australia and New Zealand and the European Union, for example, to continue to let TikTok operate… particularly as the risks become clear.”

The Prime Minister is refusing to say whether New Zealand would consider a ban if our Five Eyes spying partner, the United States, moved first.

“Oh, look hasn't been something I've thought about… I haven't thought about it.”

Nor would he say whether New Zealand would support US calls for ByteDance to sell the app:“ Again, that's not a conversation that I've had or I've been briefed on particularly.”

But the PM is keeping half an eye on developments: “I’m aware of the conversation in the US but it’s not something we've discussed here… I've been following a little bit.”

TikTok responds

TikTok did not respond to Marsh and Potter’s comments by the deadline for publication but last year, they responded to similar concerns raised by Potter.

TikTok described his company’s analysis as, at best misleading, and, at worst severely flawed and biased. A statement said: “Their results contained a number of inaccuracies that should cast doubt on the validity of their findings.”

TikTok also said the app doesn’t collect data from all accounts on a given device and that GPS data is’t collected in all countries. Location information is used to improve the app experience and for reasons set out in the privacy policy: “We detail the information we collect in our privacy policies and in our help centre,” they said.