“I saw somewhere..” or “I heard that…” My friends often begin, a sentence that is nearly always followed by a scientific study, a piece of current events or maybe even a tidbit of some niche history. I might then say to them, “where was that ‘somewhere’ you heard about this?” The response, often coughed up with a small amount of shame, is more often than not “…TikTok.”
While originally used for entertainment, the sharing of lip sync and dance videos, makeup tutorials or fashion trends, in recent years TikTok has evolved into a hotbed for political discussion, organized activism, social critique, scientific discourse and a general place for people to share their opinions on what is happening in the world. Students are spending more and more time scrolling due to addictive algorithms, and less time reading national media publications or even local college newspapers like The Sun. Most of my friends and acquaintances have told me that they never read the news anymore, national or local. That does not mean however, that they are totally in the dark. Rather, they’re exposed to current events via TikTok. That said, the information they are receiving is often biased or even non-factual.
Although recently a number of traditional news channels have created TikTok accounts, most “news” on TikTok is shared by regular people opening their phone, hitting the record button and talking. In the middle of an endless scroll , and often lacking media literacy skills, viewers tend not to make a further effort to check the factualness of this person’s information, and this information can go viral and reach millions before someone else has the chance to refute what they are saying. In other words, wide scale gossip.
Not only is TikTok full of inaccuracies, but its addictive algorithm creates an almost inescapable black hole of content. A frequent critique that I hear from other Cornell students regarding traditional news outlets is that each news station has either a partisan lean or an extreme partisan bias. Although it is true that some publications have a partisan lean, numerous popular news outlets have proven reliable and fairly impartial, and I can say with certainty more accurate than the majority of random TikTok videos. Someone can read almost any traditional news publication and they’ll receive relatively unbiased information about local and global issues. TikTok, on the other hand, is designed to show users videos that will keep them scrolling — videos that are similar to ones they liked in the past. This not only creates an echo chamber in which people may not be exposed to certain news, but it also creates an echo chamber of opinion, especially opinion presented as fact, and people forget that there was ever a difference.
So, yes. I believe that we should ban TikTok. I have personally deleted the wretched app. So, would it really be so bad if the government does? When individuals profit off of making the most viral video and not the most truthful, can we ever trust the information they transmit? We no longer live in a world where we all can stand on the common ground of truth. How can we as a society progress if we are fighting about what is and isn’t real, instead of what to do about it. There is a healthy amount of skepticism in institutions, and then there is conspiracy. Most TikTok content creators may not even be trying to mislead their audience, and yet, when people do not have the proper skills to decipher the media they are consuming, it is still just as dangerous as those who intentionally spread lies.
Beyond TikTok — or perhaps despite it — the solution to the fracture that has formed across the country begins at places like Cornell. People should read The Sun!!! At the very least, there should be trust in our peers and their ability to faithfully report without the big bad corporations holding them at gunpoint telling them what to say. Next, we are at a world class university. There should exist some kind of education on media literacy at university… Oh wait! There is! We have an English department dedicated to teaching critical reading and rhetorical analysis skills, a psychology department who teaches cognitive processes, heuristics and bias and a History department which will often cover the use of propaganda throughout time. Media literacy is a skill inherently interdisciplinary, making it somewhat difficult to standardize in a curriculum. So, all students should be at least exposed to the concept through the study of these disciplines, as Arts and Sciences at least attempts through the use of distributions. I believe that it is our responsibility as bright young adults and Cornellians, to rebuild a country not necessarily unified by political ideology or otherwise, but rather one with a common reality.
Sophie Gross is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her fortnightly column Observing aims to analyze popular and academic culture at Cornell in an attempt to understand current social and political trends sweeping the country. She can be reached at [email protected]