Because tiktok is the only social platform that exists. Because libraries don't exist. Because teens never go to the movie theater like their parents did.
My sibling in Christ you posted this on a social platform used by minors that is not under threat by the government
Some people just want to be angry.
What if I told you that having absolutely no community third spaces is a result of car dependency?
Ever heard people complain that it's impossible to just meet new people in real life because everyone everywhere is busy? It's because we don't have third spaces anymore, and one really big reason for that is car dependency. People really don't like to drive, for the most part, and they're generally not going to go drive to hang out somewhere; it becomes both dangerous and a special pain in the ass if alcohol enters the equation, as it does for many (but not all) third spaces. In short, if people go to a third space, it's usually going to be one inside their own hyper local community or they won't bother. These are all generalities, of course; miss me with anecdotal exceptions. Well, we keep our cities badly zoned and low density so that you don't really have hyper local third spaces, you just get weird, semi-local, sanitized big box "third spaces" (massive sarcasm quotes) like Chili's or Starbucks that don't actually fill that role. They just want you to spend money and get out, there's no actual tie to the community.
Having an outdoors that's so utterly lifeless and hostile to anything that's not a car that kids "hang out" on social media is neither normal nor desirable, unless you're a tech exec, I guess.
In the town where I grew up, there was a tiny park downtown where all the weird kids hung out. It was a funky little park which had a lot of character. Then they renovated it and I never see anyone there anymore when I go back.
Of course, they took out all the benches and they took out the trees and walls that gave a modicum of privacy.
There were always paranoid kids who thought the cops were watching the park from other buildings such as one of the bars across the street (college town) but getting rid of everything that made the park theirs and taking way any feeling of privacy killed it.
My daughter is 13 now. We're in another town. There is so little for kids to do. She spends most of the time talking to her friends on Discord.
I don't think that's what a meme is.
As much as I don't like TikTok, I don't like the idea of the government censoring arbitrary apps under vague notions of "national security".
It would be one thing if they were passing legislation about surveillance in apps, but it's clearly not about that or 99% of American apps would be under the chopping block (they're selling data to arbitrary buyers, so the data can be obtained by "foreign adversaries" anyway). Instead, they're just handing the executive power to strongarm any app into American control, or lose the huge American market.
I feel like proponents of this are getting too distracted by their hatred of TikTok, and this nonsense about third spaces isn't helping. TikTok is just the beginning, and a convenient one because it's such a hot topic right now.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-should-give-unconstitutional-tiktok-bans
I grew up in a time where you couldn't loiter, I had no money to spend, and social media didn't exist. I still managed to have a lot of fun. Why are people acting like TikTok is some kind of life necessity that they'll die without?
And I'm certain that if TikTok is banned, an American-based competitor will pop right up.
Nothing about this is true what the heck? Kids aren't just banned from ever being anywhere, my friends and I hung out in parks and at restaurants and at eachothers' houses all the time. And anyone who's been on social media and thinks it's an appropriate place for kids is very sus or naive. Even the most squeaky clean of sites are cesspools of bullying and grooming and right wing propaganda, and any use beyond looking at memes and catching up with irl friends should be supervised to some extent.
This post acts like we live in a dystopia where kids aren't aren't allowed to do anything and need social media to have any friends, which is only the case in really shitty circumstances where a kid is super lonely irl or somehow lives somewhere with no park or library or other good hangout spots. The banning of one specific app (which you can just get around with a vpn) isn't going to disenfranchise all zoomers overnight, it'll be a minor inconvenience people get over when they get a vpn or go to a different site. I just wish the people pushing to ban tik tok would apply the same pressure to American companies also pushing propaganda and doing shady stuff with your data
Hehe, there's someone fearing about losing their dopamine source. Typical addict behavior.
Tbc I understand the sentiment here, but it's not a very well thought out take. Plenty of advertising revenue is being generated by teens' presence on tiktok. They are being exploited monetarily by an extremely hostile and repressive foreign power.
I get that there are nuances to this but it's not "oh look the teens' one free place to just be is being taken away!" It's not free in any way.
Like yeah, we should be building community infrastructure to allow for teens and humans in general to have meaningful engagement with each other. In no way is any social media platform a solution for that deficit and it's dumb to pretend it is.
The confusing part of this is that they think this is a teen issue, like they see adults loitering everywhere. There's logic behind why you don't see them doing it because they have their own homes to hang out at but if four adults were hanging out by the door of a shop they wouldn't get special treatment.
In most places adults gather outside of their homes you also need to pay for outside of parks
What a little drama queen.
This idea is called a "Third Place". Your first place is home, the second place is work, and the third place is another place that isn't the first 2. There used to be more of these like malls, plazas, parks, and others. In the last few decades, these places have gone away, had funding cut, or otherwise died. And like OP is saying, there are places that have been created to fill this gap, but they have been monetized :(
I realized that I treated Reddit as a third place. It was somewhere I felt like a community existed that I could talk to people and just hang out. It wouldn't surprise me if people felt the same about Tik Tok or Facebook. So when one of those places is threatening to leave, it makes sense they feel there will be a void created.
Not sure what a good solution would be as this is a complicated issue.
