AT when the Senate launches a commission of inquiry on TikTok, it is necessary to prioritize its dangers. While TikTok is potentially a channel for large-scale misinformation, even espionage, its main danger lies in the mind-warping it induces. Propaganda is in the minority on TikTok. What is less so is the destruction of the attentional means making it possible to deal with any slogan, any animated image, any pre-chewed thought.
TikTok perfectly illustrates what Giuliano da Empoli theorizes in Chaos Engineers [JC Lattès, 2019]. The new propagandists aim not so much to favor one idea over another, but to empty the truth of its very appeal by the incessant influx of shocking photos and weightless words. One example among many others: 19% of young people aged 18 to 24 consider that the Egyptian pyramids are of extraterrestrial origin. At this level, it is no longer geopolitical influence, it is mass lobotomy. We already hear the classic counter-argument: “The problem isn’t TikTok, it’s how we use it. » If this appeal to individual morality is valid in theory, it turns out to be inapplicable in practice.
From a quality perspective: TikTok, in and of itself, doesn’t force anyone to watch nonsense. And if we can theoretically follow exclusively science popularization accounts, for example, we also note that these accounts do not appear in the French top 10. Instead, they are comedians, dancers, anonymous gallery entertainers, quickly consumed, quickly forgotten. The short video format, the profusion of editing tools, the TikTok algorithm, the youth of its users: everything contributes to the promotion of the inept, to a staccato rhythm.
Fragility of consent
From a quantity perspective: I personally tested TikTok. I won’t go back, and no one will blame me. In my case, my friends do not ask me daily to comment on this or that video. But I was able to talk to students, for whom this application is a real scourge, an addiction to which they often sacrifice two hours a day and against which they fight. Struggle in which they sometimes feel quite alone.
TikTok, like all other applications, does not impose anything, but does not leave the field of possibilities absolutely open either. The platform disposes us to consume short and tangy videos, en masse. shiny, punchy, captivating: Like excess sugar, TikTok content makes everything else bland. In this sense, as essayist Nicholas Carr noted for Google in 2008, but to a much greater degree, TikTok alters our attention spans and makes it difficult to focus for long on what neither shines nor moves.
You have 51.04% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.