TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24g8v6qr1mo

by ourmandave • 6 months ago

200 217 6 months ago

dylan6042• 6 months ago

It would be nice if we lived in a world where settlement money would not dissuade them from taking their case forward. I know that's the world of unicorns and rainbows though, and definitely not the world we live in.

taurath• 6 months ago

It would be nice if we lived in a world where civil lawsuits were not the only way to gain any recompense from companies greed, as well.

The law protects companies but rarely binds them, and the law binds citizens but rarely protects them. This is the only recourse, in our land where wealth and power mean more than the rule of law.

augusteo• 6 months ago

The timing is interesting. TikTok settles right as jury selection begins, Snap settled last week. Meta and YouTube are the ones staying in.

I wonder if the settlement amounts will ever become public. The Big Tobacco comparison keeps coming up, but those settlements were massive and included ongoing payments. Hard to imagine social media companies agreeing to anything similar without admitting some level of harm.

As a parent of two kids (8 and 6), I think about this constantly. We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder as they get older. The "attention-grabbing design" part isn't some conspiracy theory. These apps are explicitly optimized for engagement. The question is whether that optimization crosses a legal line.

Curious how the trial plays out with Zuckerberg on the stand.

dylan6042• 6 months ago

We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder as they get older.

Curious into what kind of example you as a parent are setting in limiting screen time for yourself. For me, it's easy as I'm an old fart that has had a longer time without devices than with one while also not participating in the socials. We now have parents that have had a device for the majority of their life having kids that will never know a time without devices. So this is an honest bit of curiosity at the risk of sounding judgemental.

boelboel2• 6 months ago

I think a major part of the difficulty is because kids (and arguably adults even more) are practically forced to use screens for schoolwork.

Can't really be without a phone when they need to meet up with friends either. Completely going against smartphones and screens could end up isolating them.

OGEnthusiast• 6 months ago

Why is TikTok always singled out in these social media addiction lawsuits? Instagram and YouTube are just as guilty, if not more so.

reenorap2• 6 months ago

Did you read the article? Snapchat, Meta and Google are also defendants. Snapchat and now Tiktok have settled.

davey48016• 6 months ago

They are also defendants in the same lawsuit, but they have not settled.

pinnochio• 6 months ago

"The defendants now include Meta - which owns Instagram and Facebook and YouTube parent Google. Snapchat settled with the plaintiff last week."

publicdebates5• 6 months ago

TikTok's algorithm is significantly better and therefore more addictive. I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024. Getting banned from it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Too bad it only happened in Jan 2025. Will never get that year back, or the mental health I lost from it. (I'm not going to sue, though I could definitely win such a suit.)

izend• 6 months ago

"I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024"

My jaw is on the floor... Can you provide details of your usage, were you just going through video after video for 12-14 hours or were you involved in content production or something?

sethops1• 6 months ago

I have... so many questions. Not the least of which is, why? I gave TikTok maybe 10 minutes of my time, once a year just to see what others are seeing. And each time, it was always meaningless junk. I'd uninstall the app after; it does nothing for me. Why did it captivate you?

jader2012• 6 months ago

having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024

That's a mind blowing statistic, and I'm sure this is much more common than we think.

This is why I hope we wake up and realize that social media is going to be the ruin of our society. I hope this trial is the beginning of the end of social media platforms that prey on addictive behaviors.

morleytj2• 6 months ago

This is wild, what were the effects like for you? I imagine your eyes and hands would start to see physical effects from that level of use for such a consistent time.

What sort of social changes did you notice after that period of time?

I've never used TikTok, but the techniques they employ sounds seriously addictive.

buellerbueller3• 6 months ago

Please, sue them. They are harming people, yourself included.

xuhu• 6 months ago

You can get banned from TikTok ? That's horrible, how ? Can you provide detailed instructions please?

polshaw• 6 months ago

(regardless of the fact Google is included in the suit;) Youtube is a different model I think. Yes you can burn time with it forever if you are bored, but it's not the relentless dopamine machine gun that IG and Tiktok deliver. (which is why YT tried to get in on that with shorts, but failed).

winwang• 6 months ago

(in addition to other replies) I believe there was a study on brainrot where, acrosss a few different platforms, TikTok was significantly worse than e.g. Youtube. (sry, on mobile or I'd ref. hopefully later...)

mikestew• 6 months ago

Oh, they’re coming for IG, too:

“IG is a drug”: Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...

buellerbueller3• 6 months ago

TikTok is not being singled out in this trial; the plaintiff is suing all the Socials; TikTok is merely the one to have settled most recently:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...

direwolf206• 6 months ago

Tiktok, Instagram and I think X are all getting sued at the same time.

NoPicklez5• 6 months ago

Because TikTok basically popularitised short form content, which is considered a more addictive form that what instagram and youtube does outside of their reels and shorts.

noitpmeder2• 6 months ago

This case reads like a single individual suing these companies

What is to stop other individuals from filing the same suit and expecting similar outcomes?

reenorap2• 6 months ago

This is the first of many lawsuits that was exactly the same.

WarmWash• 6 months ago

Not much.

Class action suites suffer immensely from bad actors freeloading on the backs of people actually harmed. I have a friend who practices law in the area on some pretty high profile medical cases, it's a chronic problem trying to weed out people who were affected from people who shamelessly want money. Basically people playing victim to steal from actual victims, and even worse, the side doing the weeding is the side who originated the harm.

miltonlost• 6 months ago

I hope nothing. Maybe if enough people rightfully sue, then these companies will be forced into going out of business since we can't put the executives away for the crimes.

boca_honey• 6 months ago

That sounds like an excellent outcome. Also, I don't think executives should go to jail for something like this. Commercial social media going out of business and their executives paying enourmous fines is the best that could happen for the world IMO, but it is also extremely unlikely.

Andr2Andr• 6 months ago

It is a bellwether trial, a test of sorts combining hundreds of similar cases. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellwether_trial

noitpmeder2• 6 months ago

So wouldn't the fact that settlements are pouring in literally prove other can do it too?

DonHopkins• 6 months ago

I'm addicted to pro-Release-the-Epstein-Files, anti-Trump, anti-ICE, and Innocent-Americans-Being-Shot-Dead-in-the-Streets-Then-Accussed-of-Being-Terrorists videos, and they just cut me off cold turkey, dammit!

TikTok blocks Epstein mentions and anti-Trump videos, users claim. Alleged censorship comes after investors loyal to Trump take over social media platform.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...

TikTok users in the US have reported being unable to write the word ‘Epstein’ in messages amid accusations that the social media platform is suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump.
The issues come less than a week after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, was forced to divest a majority stake in its US operations to a group of investors loyal to President Trump, who was a close associate with the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

SunshineTheCat3• 6 months ago

I 100% agree with the premise that TikTok is addictive and even dangerous to consume in large amounts (that's why I don't consume it at all).

But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers. Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Again, I get the danger here, and I don't like TikTok as a whole. I just don't really know where the line is between something that the parent is allowing kids to do (like spending a billion hours on TikTok), versus something they have no control over (like a company badly constructing a car seat, or similar).

thinkingtoilet3• 6 months ago

I'm trying to read this with the best of intentions, but you're saying you really can not tell the difference social media and a cheeseburger in terms of access, addiction, and damage?

SunshineTheCat3• 6 months ago

Yes, of course I understand the addictive difference. The point I'm making is: does parental decision making have any bearing on this, or can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly.

henryfjordan3• 6 months ago

Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and eventually eating enough will kill you.

Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me?

sheikhnbake• 6 months ago

I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less about the product itself and more how its advertised and marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same problem, prompting them to settle out early.

zeroonetwothree• 6 months ago

The evidence doesn’t seem to support your claim that cheeseburgers are as addicting as social media.

Maybe if you had picked gambling or alcohol…

SunshineTheCat3• 6 months ago

That has nothing to do with the point being made. The point was about to what level parents are responsible for things they allow their kids to do, regardless of how "addictive" it is. Particularly if they know it's harmful.

brailsafe• 6 months ago

I have doubts most overconsumers of fast food are just getting burgers... like effectively nobody. Is it more likely that people damage themselves with cheeseburgers or the soda that comes with them?

I tried to eat as many cheeseburgers as I could in one sitting (I easily eat double the amount of food of others in one sitting normally), and tapped out at 10 or something, which is impractical and gross, there's a physical limit unless you have certain conditions

If you only go to fast food once a week or less with your kid as a treat, I feel like you could probably exclude soda and fries and tell them to get as many burgers as they want, but they have to eat them all, and it would be more of a lesson than anything lol

expedition322• 6 months ago

Tech companies know exactly what they are doing. They deliberately sell crack to kids- some of the people who make money from it are here on HN so good luck with getting any honest discussion.

toomuchtodo• 6 months ago

The US has executed people in international waters over the claim of fentanyl being trafficked into the country. Is Insta and TikTok as addictive as fentanyl? If so, does it warrant a similar response? I think a cheeseburger is not an equivalent analogy. Singapore also executes drug traffickers, for what it’s worth.

https://www.techpolicy.press/is-tiktok-digital-fentanyl/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tiktok-is-chinas-digital-fenta...

Certainly, some regard social media generally as addictive, and reckon TikTok is a particularly potent format. Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and author of the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In The Age of Abundance, referred to Tiktok as a "potent and addictive digital drug":
I can’t speak to the surveillance piece mentioned in the article, but I can attest to the addictive nature of TikTok and other similar digital media. The human brain is wired to pay attention to novelty. One of the ways our brain gets us to pay attention to novel stimuli is by releasing dopamine, a reward neurotransmitter, in a part of the brain called the reward pathway. What TikTok does is combine a moving image, already highly reinforcing to the human brain, with the novelty of a very short video clip, to create a potent and addictive digital drug.

wasmainiac2• 6 months ago

I just don't really know where the line

It is developed to be as addictive like a drug, but it’s not even fun. Just stupid mind numbing content.gambling does the same thing, and many jurisdictions have outlawed it for minors.

jader2012• 6 months ago

But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers.

The problem with analogies to things like cheeseburgers, gambling, drugs, cigarettes, etc., is:

1. Availability -- you have to go somewhere to acquire/participate in these things*

2. Cost -- you have to have money to spend. That is, it's not something you can consume/participate in for free -- you have to have money to spend.

* Gambling is theoretically freely available via gambling apps. But still comes at a cost.

With social media, anybody can do it for unlimited amounts of time, and for free. All you need is a phone/laptop/desktop with internet access -- which nearly every person on the planet has.

Addiction + Free + Widely available = Destruction

Mordisquitos4• 6 months ago

To your points I would add the following difference between TikTok on the one hand and cheeseburgers, drugs, cigarettes, etc. on the other.

3. Targeting -- even under the (debatable) premise that they are intentionally designed to be addictive, cheeseburgers, drugs and cigarettes do not actively target each addict by optimising their properties to their individual addiction.

If I am addicted to smoking, the tobacco industry does indeed try to keep me hooked, among other things by offering me many flavours and alternatives. However, the cigarettes I personally consume are not constantly adjusting their formula, appearance and packet design specifically to satisfy my tastes and desires.

ajam15079• 6 months ago

So what you're saying is that we should ban porn then?

AppleBananaPie2• 6 months ago

My personal vice is junk food. I wish they banned junk food. I'm not sure how the law would work but it would be objectively better for me as a human if they did.

(This is completely disregarding how practical such a ban would be)

lotsofpulp2• 6 months ago

A power law formula tax based on sugar/sat fat/total carbs per mass of food/drink should do the trick.

Or give everyone cheap daily GLP-1 pills.

DavidPiper• 6 months ago

You're getting some mild heat in sibling comments here. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation goes into a lot of detail on this exact point about parental responsibility.

There are others that touch on personal vs. societal responsibility too and the difficulties with parental/personal moderation and change (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke off the top of my head).

There is an enormous amount of nuance that goes into answering your questions and addressing your assumptions that HN is probably not a great medium for, if you're serious about understanding the answers.

GlacierFox• 6 months ago

"Again, I get the danger here..."

Haha, wtf. You don't.

nunez3• 6 months ago

The difference between social media and cheeseburgers here is that I don't NEED to physically go to McDonald's to find out if a business is closed or learn more about their work. (The number of businesses that only post operational updates, specials or samples of their work on Instagram is staggering. Google Maps isn't trustworthy; websites DEFINITELY aren't trustworthy either.)

biophysboy2• 6 months ago

Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

There are other options for addressing social problems besides lawsuits. Other rich places in this world are not nearly as fat as us. I suspect environments also matter for social media addiction. We should investigate why!

direwolf206• 6 months ago

It's actually because they have more lawsuits and more severe lawsuits, leading companies to be afraid of breaking the law so they don't, and then lawsuits decrease.

Lawsuits are the one official mechanism for righting wrongs. They're the only mechanism that the perpetrator of a wrong can't just choose to ignore.

sitzkrieg• 6 months ago

it was sold so israel could have more control over the narratives visible. nothing to do with any real safety concerns

JumpCrisscross5• 6 months ago

Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If McDonald’s is handing them out for free at the playground, yes.

ajam15079• 6 months ago

I hate that this needs to be said, but giving kids free food is not illegal.

b00ty4breakfast• 6 months ago

Should I be able to sue McDonald's if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If RJ Reynolds was handing out free cigarettes to children, even though the parent either consented to this or simply didn't know about it, would you consider RJ Reynolds' responsible for the adverse effects of children smoking?

ajam15079• 6 months ago

If it was legal to hand out cigarettes to children and the parents consented I don't see how the company could be held liable. The state should not be doing the job of parents, and the judicial branch should not being doing the job of the legislative branch.

clipsy3• 6 months ago

Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue a liquor store if they sell your kid a fifth of vodka?

conception• 6 months ago

To add, McDonalds is required to list calories and nutritional information. There are various agencies and regulations guarding us from them selling us rat meat instead of cow. Education on “junk food” is widespread and has (had…) widespread government education programs.

There is a great deal of information given to parents on what is in McDonalds.

I would say that most parents, not those on a tech site, have no idea how tiktok works, what studies have shown about it or its dangers.

NoPicklez5• 6 months ago

I agree, there's plenty of information out there and nutrition is often taught in schools.

Additionally, other content like TV and movies has content ratings, social media does not have anything of the sort.

NoPicklez5• 6 months ago

Food and nutritional science is something many of us know (to a degree) and has been taught often in high schools. That is partly why you know that cheeseburgers aren't great for you, because you know they're highly processed, high in salt and high in fat and that's written on the label.

But the knowledge of the harmful impacts of social media aren't as abundant, nor are they identified or classified.

McDonalds are required to list the nutritional information of what you're consuming. TV shows and movies have content ratings to know what you're going to be consuming. Social media like Tiktok does not have any form of rating to know what you're consuming or going to consume.

There is a lot of less rigour on short from content like Tiktok, in comparison with McDonalds.

direwolf206• 6 months ago

Yes, you should be able to recover damages from McDonald's if they made their food addictive on purpose.

NoPicklez5• 6 months ago

I don't know if I agree with that.

I don't know how to draw even a blurred line between I've made my burger taste better because I added salt to it, but has now make it more addictive as a result.

You could argue an Oreo has been developed to taste good such that you want to eat them again.

I understand your point and I agree to an extent but I don't know how you do that. Becoming addicted to things comes with a level of personal accountability, to a degree.

j452• 6 months ago

The thing I really liked about Tiktok originally was the departure from the perfectionism of Instagram, and people being ok with participating in the dance moves and trends. It was pretty positive. The thing is once you have an engaged audience sometimes you might want to keep them captivated (and their attention farmed to resell ads to).

With that being said, I don't know if McDonalds is not a really usable comparison.

McDonalds is not an endless conveyor belt of food arriving in your hands 24/7 and beeping and buzzing you when it's not to learning how and what to put in front of you to keep eating endlessly until you can't eat anymore.

There's more useful studies that doomscrolling and shorts literally decrease brain size, increase depression, and lead to dopamine exhaustion.

Short Video players are digital slot machines. They seem to be designed to let people keep using it who might not be aware on how to build up defences, or of defences are needed. In a casino many of the things the games machines can and can't do are legislated by law. It might be surprising to learn how many of those things out right, similar to it, or unique to it can happen on a phone without circumstance. Casinos will also remind you to gamble responsibly, and be able to ban yourself if needed.

The line is really simple for kids - screens loaded with bright colors that are constantly changing with many layers of sounds from ages 1-5 pretty harmful at overriding their senses. Then, there's other content traps from there. The recent moves to schools that go screen free (or greatly reduce passive consumption) is critical. Putting a chromebook in front of a kid for 8 hours isn't always progress.

GBeastMode• 6 months ago

Casino laws protect the player, at least in reputable casinos, whereas short video players on your phone just pull you in with no safeguards, placing all the responsibility on the user

lateforwork• 6 months ago

China imposes strong restrictions on the Chinese version of TikTok, see here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...

Excerpts: Douyin [Chinese version of TikTok] introduced in-app parental controls, banned underage users from appearing in livestreams, and released a “teenager mode” that only shows whitelisted content, much like YouTube Kids. In 2019, Douyin limited users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day, accessible only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Then, in 2021, it made the use of teenager mode mandatory for users under 14.

LoganDark• 6 months ago

Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue McDonald's if they delivered you unlimited cheeseburgers for free, said nothing of the dangers, and even encouraged you to eat more, and then you became obese/sick from it? Sure, it may have been your choice to accept/eat them, but you did so uninformed, and based on false premises, and the risks were hidden from you, or even explicitly downplayed.

That's what social media is. It's free delivery of unlimited cheeseburgers, but for your brain.

In the above example, you were tempted with something that seemed good, but that carried great risks, to generate business for another who knew of the risks, but either didn't tell you, or even lied to you. When the risks backfire on you -- the risks they knew about from the very start -- or even have already been backfiring on you for a while, I think it's absolutely fair to blame that business for knowingly tempting you into it, and that it's also absolutely fair to seek damages. Proving those damages is another matter, but I think it's absolutely fair to try.

jmcgough• 6 months ago

Worse, people have a limit to how many cheeseburgers they can eat at once. You can spend all day on your phone.

popalchemist• 6 months ago

Cheeseburgers did not come about with the intent to poison. Social media is deliberately weaponized.

MrToadMan• 6 months ago

What if while you were eating a cheeseburger, McDonald’s was magically replenishing that burger so that no matter how much you kept eating there was still some left. Moreover you had little control over the ratios of fat and sugar used to replenish it and they earned more the longer you spent eating it. Would you consider them harming you if they were prioritising stuffing it with ingredients that maximised the amount you ate and ignored sensible limits on sugar and fat?

radicalethics• 6 months ago

A drug is a drug is a drug is a drug.

America has never been able to successfully thwart drug proliferation. Porn, Video Games, Social Media, all substance-less drugs. It's up to you to keep your kid off Heroin and it's also up to you to keep them off those other things at addictive levels.

The thing is, keeping your kid away from things like Heroin takes a village (especially if Heroin is pervasive in the environment). The same is true for those other things. Adults have to enter the room at some point.

We've been needing a trillion-dollar class action lawsuit against social media companies. Long overdue.

buellerbueller3• 6 months ago

Scraped from unsealed court/discovery docs about the addictive potential of various social media platforms: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/?...

filoeleven• 6 months ago

Remember: there was a TikTok ban that was signed into law and took effect on January 19, 2025 which said that it would be allowed back once it was owned by a US company.

Trump did not enforce the ban.

As soon as TikTok changed ownership last week, censorship of posts that are not in line with the Trump regime began happening.

alex1138• 6 months ago

I think too much gets made of addiction in a soft sense and not enough in a hard sense

If I log off Facebook and it starts spamming me with fake notifications, it's addictive in a way that's more than just "Facebook provides a great service! I'm on it all the time! It's so addictive! :)"

If feeds were chronological and they didn't blatantly lie to your face, or you got messages on time (they like not sending it to you by email) it wouldn't be addictive in a lab rat style

(This is Facebook, not TikTok, but still. And yes, I know TT tries to be addictive on purpose)

dankwizard• 6 months ago

Not sure why poeple don't just put the phone down? We really are the most sheltered gentle generation. Oh no, this app is taking up my time, we need to BAN IT.

aucisson_masque• 6 months ago

Tell that to a drug user. It works the same way.

And when the app is developed purposely to make people addict, that’s an issue.

You can’t just blame the user when their chance to have a normal app usage have been rigged.

Aeglaecia• 6 months ago

re adults it does fall to individual responsibility , re kids we can partially blame parents for not taking care of their kids properly , overall the enemy of our attention has quadrillions of dollars which is fairly difficult to fight against

flumpcakes• 6 months ago

That's not how addiction works. If you could "just stop" then it isn't really an addiction.

dmix• 6 months ago

Huh, that's exactly the solution to addiction? Step 1 is always changing your behaviour patterns to break out of habits and avoid things that draw you into it.

Make your bedroom a phone-free zone, charge it in the living room overnight, use the built in parenting and screentime controls that every modern phone OS has, don't let your kids stare at the screen all day. Etc.

This isn't rocket science. Self control is one of the most important things you need to learn. It sucks and it's hard but it's basic life stuff.

The only difference with social media addiction vs drugs/gambling is that it's not socially ostracized like other addictions so people ignore it.

ajam15079• 6 months ago

This is the lie that keeps people addicted. Plenty of people quit their very real addictions every day. If you imagine you're helplessly addicted, you will remain addicted.

nunez3• 6 months ago

Not drinking or gambling works so well for alcoholics and gamblers. Who needs rehab anyway?

ajam15079• 6 months ago

And yet we're talking about a case against social media companies and not a case against casinos or distillers.

SirMaster2• 6 months ago

And are their laws about how much I can go gamble at the casino right now or how much I can go buy at a liquor store and drink tonight?

Pretty sure too much gambling and too much alcohol is worse than watching too many short videos. So how can we say that spending time on figuring out how to block people from watching too many short videos is a better use of our time and resources than limiting gambling and drinking.

jajuuka• 6 months ago

This isn't about the small group of people who lack self control. It's about the vast majority that can use something responsibly. Most people can consume alcohol and gamble without giving their lives to it.

Not to mention this presupposes that social media addiction is rampant. But there isn't a scientific consensus on that. This lawsuit reads like scaremongering of the past around television and comic books. Instead of regulating content or user privacy we get these dog and pony shows.

davewritescode• 6 months ago

Nice straw man.

Nobody is talking about banning anything, we’re talking specifically about holding social media companies accountable for marketing to children a product that is knowingly addictive and potentially harmful to their health.

Part of the issue with social media is that no reasonable parent lets their 12 year old watch porn or drink but Instagram and ticktock are on a lot more 12 year old’s phone’s than you realize. Social media has network effects and creates tremendous social pressure to not make your kid “different” when half the classroom is sharing TikToks.

I’m not conservative in the slightest but I see no reason to treat social media any differently than alcohol, tobacco or gambling. Available without restriction to adults but limited to children under a certain age.

card_zero12• 6 months ago

This stuff is still unclear to me. The addictive drugs, ones that punish a quitter chemically, are not mysterious, but gambling addiction certainly is. "Dopamine" won't work as an explanation - for instance I was once hooked on building a wooden table, which sucked up two months of my free time and lots of money, and damaged my thumbs, and no doubt I was driven by the dopamine rush of learning through the repetitive process of chiseling. But gambling is assumed to be a glitch, not a wholesome obsession. In what way does it differ? The addiction is very old, I'm sure there are accounts from the 1700s, and it doesn't even require a house to reel the gambler in - it could all be about informal games and wagers, still leading to huge debts. It's tempting to blame it on dumb ideas about luck and fate, but the dumb ideas involved could be varied and complex.

That's similar to dumb ideas involving social pressure. When people have a tendency to be dumb about a thing we use the law to restrict the thing, apparently. But this involves, in effect, an authoritative declaration of "that's dumb" by law. I feel personally threatened, then, in activities such as my woodwork, which might have been an equally dumb obsession! I know nobody's at all likely to regulate woodwork, but that's only because it's relatively unpopular. I could imagine a parallel universe where woodwork (portable somehow) becomes a trend that makes a young person feel socially relevant, and then it gets regulated. I think I disapprove of this interference with people's dumb notions.

Revolution11202• 6 months ago

This is no longer a matter of adults or minors; this is a matter of terrorist acts committed by a satanic cult and organized crime. And the response will not be limited to legal means; we will seek to respond with the same kind of terrorist tactics.

expedition322• 6 months ago

Funny I wondered the same thing with opiates. I dislike taking even aspirin so why can't everyone be like me!

Aerbil3133• 6 months ago

Congratulations! You have apparently won in life by successfully developing internal regulation during childhood and also won the genetic lottery by not having a disorder of the dopaminergic system like ADHD. Now please leave be the significant fraction of the population who don't have those privileges, thank you.

I've missed critical final exams and flights literally scrolling Instagram. Mental health disorders exist, alas.

basilgohar2• 6 months ago

The elephant in the room of all of this is that TikTok was the social media platform that allowed for the genocide taking place in Palestine by Israel to reach audiences directly. All other major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) heavily censored this information or outright deplatformed and canceled accounts of prominent dissemination of information about the war crimes being committed by Israelis.

TikTok, outside of the US and Zionist-controlled sphere of influence, remained the one place for this information to be available widely far beyond what was possible on other platforms.

All the other platforms have the same concepts of algorithms and targeting and bubbles. TikTok was uniquely not under Western control, and thus, needed to be pressured to conform.

The significant shift in young people's opinions about Israel in recent years is heavily attributed to the unfiltered information about their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians that they could uniquely see on TikTok and must not be understated, especially in light of all the major shifts in news, media, and social media over the past few years as they grapple with the fallout of losing the narrative.

I don't deny that social media as a whole has many harms and negatives, but there's no action like this being taken against Meta, Google, or Twitter despite the exact same harms present, sometimes even more so, on their platforms. They're already in the same overall group that supports the narrative and have done so by self-censoring their platforms accordingly. TikTok didn't play ball and got trampled.

kurthr2• 6 months ago

I'm fully against censorship, and I don't want it covered up, but at some point profiting off of the suffering of others and distracting people with holocaust porn or influencer virtue signaling is self defeating. What did all of that social audience gain? Clicks, entertainment, dollars, while children died? That's disgusting.

And in the end is there anything of value left, any documentation of what happened, or how to prevent it from happening again? Nope. That thankless unprofitable work is done by others and ignored by the same consumers.

basilgohar2• 6 months ago

All media, newspapers, and social media networks do this. I'm not sure why you're raising this specifically in response to the fact I was stating TikTok was uniquely able to bring awareness to the issue of the genocide in Palestine.

Many people were completely unfamiliar with the plight of the Palestinians over the past 100 years and TikTok (and, to a much less degree, other platforms) brought the issue to their attention. Israel is no longer untouchable and many have recognized them for what they are now - the last remaining Western imperialist settler colony. This was not the case merely 4 years ago. The transformation is stark and real.

What can people do with that knowledge? That's up to them.

I don't really get the rest of your comment, unfortunately.

deaux• 6 months ago

It gained a massive shift in thinking that would not have been possible without it. Tens of millions people now have very different opinions about the events and parties than they would've without it. In the long run, that matters.

If you think this is meaningless, take a look at countries like Saudi Arabia pouring tens of billions of dollars in trying to achieve the exact opposite - cultivating a positive opinion/view of the country among those in the West. They wouldn't be doing this if it didn't matter. The US hegemony has thrived largely on this kind of soft power. If the whole world (instead of just half the world) had already hated the US decades ago, it would've become nowhere near as powerful.

nicholast• 6 months ago

I am less concerned about addiction than i am about introducing micro targeted foreign agendas into our nation’s cultural landscape.

codyb4• 6 months ago

I mean, why not be concerned about both lol? We can do two things at once I think, and both of those things sound fairly negative.

Liftyee5• 6 months ago

Fundamentally, I think having a source of "free dopamine" on tap is not going to do any good. If I can get distracted from my real world tasks anytime, anywhere, the immediate incentives to work on real things disappear. Effectively, one can get stuck in a local minimum.

I don't know how to solve it, but personally I've chosen to block as many feeds/algorithms as I can, so I have to make a conscious decision to search for something (making it just as hard as making the conscious decision that I'm likely putting off). The only feeds I have right now are the FT and Hacker News. Everything else is just a blank home screen with a search bar.

echelon2• 6 months ago

This is what drugs and alcohol can become if not used in moderation.

Once we have the AI holodeck (the full-sensory interactive, possibly multiplayer one), can you only imagine?

TikTok is only the punch card phase of this. TikTok may as well be black and white television. Just imagine what we might have in twenty years.

Maybe this is why we haven't found alien life. If their biologies have attention mechanisms like ours, maybe they automate highs and turn inward instead of outward. (I do like that better than AGI gray goo taking over galaxies.)

Liftyee5• 6 months ago

Agreed, AI/VR definitely offers nightmarish opportunities.

At least drugs/alcohol are self limiting: you have to meet your dealer, go to a store, eventually run out of money...

TikTok/Reels/Shorts are free, infinite, and in your pocket on a device you're now forced to use in daily life (bank/2fa/messaging apps).

d4v3• 6 months ago

If I can get distracted from my real world tasks anytime, anywhere, the immediate incentives to work on real things disappear. Effectively, one can get stuck in a local minimum.
I don't know how to solve it, ...
but personally I've chosen to block as many feeds/algorithms as I can, ...

I think you solved it :) (at least, for yourself)

There are many things "out there" that are addictive and distracting and thus unhealthy, but we all have to find some way to overcome

Liftyee5• 6 months ago

Thanks for your positive response. It's true, we all need to help each other in finding community and human connection again amidst the waterfall of "content".

It's taken a few years to get to this point, but seeing the effects and regrets from over consumption of feeds made me take action.

j452• 6 months ago

I was reading a few weeks ago that it's more about easy dopamine rather than free that is so incredibly destructive.

Scrolling for hits of satisfying novelty is a proposition that will not be sustainably met.

Part of me also wonders if things like this can be used for not so great things, can they be used for good things?

andai2• 6 months ago

Story time! A couple years ago, I found myself with pretty severe ADHD and no way to get treatment for it. (There may have been a global healthcare cataclysm involved...)

I wanted to make some progress on a personal project, but I had a history of abandoning things, without external accountability. I had a guy for that the previous year, which worked great, but our interests diverged, so I had to find a way to do it on my own.

I realized that I couldn't force it. I had to find a way to make it work without having sufficient dopamine. Without relying on willpower at all.

So I stumbled into environmental design from first principles. I simply designed around all the failure modes.

1. I noticed that if I skipped a day of working on my project, the chance of completely losing momentum would rise enormously. So I decided I have to work every day, but to make it sustainable it only needs to be an hour.

2. I noticed that if I put work off until later in the day, the chance of skipping a day would rise enormously. So I decided that I had to start working as soon as I woke up. (But only for an hour. I could keep going but I didn't have to.)

3. And finally I noticed that, if I started playing with my phone or surfing the internet, the day was basically over. So I made a rule that I had to keep them both off for the first hour of the day. (And I turned them off the night before for good measure. That way I am waking up into the correct state by default.)

And what do you know. I didn't miss a day for 3 months. Even my dopamine starved brain was able to persist on this project every day without fail for several months straight, because I simply made these small changes to my environment!

The project suddenly became the most fun and interesting thing I could be doing. I actually looked forward to working on it the next day, when I went to sleep at night!

card_zero12• 6 months ago

But if things interest you, does that not also provide dopamine? If the interesting things are easily available, are they "free" and addictive and bad? If they're good because they're interesting, is TikTok not interesting to those who like it? If you had a pinball machine and it distracted you, would that be bad, or a hobby? Is TikTok more compelling than pinball because of the algorithm? Is the algorithm not merely providing things that will likely interest you? Is interest bad now?

callc• 6 months ago

Wow this is a bad take and a half.

Apply the argument to abusing drugs now, and see how this argument throws all nuance out the window.

Quarrelsome9• 6 months ago

these products are intentionally designed to be addictive by some of the greatest minds of our generation. If you were intentionally designing society this would be the opposite of what you'd do.

Our children are effectively enslaved through basic trinkets and manipulation to serve as eye-balls for ad impressions to fuel equity value in silicon valley. It's fucked and it was intentionally designed to be this fucked.

The abstract of what you state makes sense, but the layers of manipulation on top of it are what the problem is.

Liftyee5• 6 months ago

No, interest is not bad. I would say that excessive time dedicated to certain interests is bad, because it might lead to neglecting other interests that have real-world consequences. There are only 24 hours in a day, after all.

Which consequences are considered significant/desirable varies depending on the person.

I am using "bad" to refer to my personal judgments of this task ("was this time well spent?") and survival/growth needs in life. Inherently, there is nothing "bad" about scrolling: many things can be overconsumed to the point of causing consequences that are bad. However, the fact that TikTok et al. algorithms (and drugs, etc.) are designed to occupy your time and attention, makes me (by extension) consider them bad, because they likely lead me to bad consequences.

If I had a pinball machine in my room and it distracted me occasionally, I would probably write it off as a bit of relaxation/fun. If I scrolled a few TikTok videos, I might say the same. But if I spent multiple hours doing each while forgetting my fundamental needs (food, water, sunlight...) repeatedly, I may well say they are bad.

It's obviously unreasonable to classify everything that doesn't advance a certain goal (money? career? education?) as "bad", so the optimum must be somewhere in the middle.

(Rambling train of thought warning)

To resolve this, I have a few heuristics. They are definitely not logically watertight, but it's what works for me.

A key tradeoff is between "how fun is this?" and "what's the opportunity cost/consequence?"

Personally, I would like to live with purpose. The algorithms that drive TikTok etc. too easily lend themselves to purposeless consumption, which can also be true for many other activities (gaming!). I feel better saying/planning "I will do 1 hour of X", then doing that wholeheartedly - but I would never consciously choose to do an hour of scrolling.

Another bias of mine is that real-world things > virtual/digital/game/simulated etc... I feel like the inherent limitations and permanent consequences of physical things make me more careful about what I'm doing and what might result. If I break a part while tinkering/messing around in the workshop, I can't just load a quicksave - it gives me an opportunity to reconsider. Given that HN is a software-heavy place, I suspect many will not feel this way - this is OK, who am I to judge?

Long term compounding benefits > short term temporary pleasures. If I devoted my scrolling time (before I blocked everything) to playing pinball, or table tennis, or Minecraft, I would probably get very good at it. Similarly, if I tinkered with a pet project or filtered some photos, there would be some result to show for it - I would be improving my skill at something. As far as I can tell, the way I was scrolling TikTok-like feeds was not bringing any long-term results that I could look back at. Famously, no one remembers most of the short videos they scroll through. It only seems to deplete my

Granted, the previous paragraph depends on what one wants - perhaps influencers analysing successful video formats would improve their ability by scrolling. I'm imagining grouping outcomes into "good", "neutral" and "bad" for me: better at programming = good, top 1% Minecraft player = neutral, 100 hours spent on Reels = bad. (Reality is more nuanced, this is just a heuristic)

Speaking of too much time pursuing interests, it's time for me to close HN and get back to my problem sets. It is definitely interesting to think about this, but considering it for too long is bad in the sense that I will feel better having finished those questions.

codyb4• 6 months ago

I just bought a flip phone and a cool pocket sized camera. I've gotten down to leaving my phone at home a fair amount, and leave my phone on a speaker that's not near anything I sit on when at home.

It's awesome, come on back out to reality. I frequently go out at this point, come back home and go to see if I have any messages and realize my phone was on me the whole time and I had no idea (I also silence pretty much everything...).

I'm super pumped to have an actual camera to play with that's pocket sized too since I did miss the camera. But now I'll have something tremendously superior and can leave that aging device filled with way too many 2FA codes I don't want to inadvertently lose at home.

andai2• 6 months ago

What kinda phone do you have? I was nostalgic for getting an old nokia, but when I actually did, using it was surprisingly painful. I guess that's kind of the point?

I still need a proper mp3 player (been using an old android) and a camera though.

...and a Kindle, and a fax machine ;)

As a side note, the "old" style Nokias now seem to be running on some kind of emulation... The Nokia startup sound lagged and stuttered and made me die a little inside.

Aerbil3133• 6 months ago

You don't need to leave behind the conveniences of a smartphone to have a phone that is smart but without the dopamine traps. There are solutions out there like TechLockdown which allow you to make a dumbphone out of your smartphone using MDMs, while still keeping critical things like messenger apps, a predefined list of websites, navigation apps, etc.

pibaker• 6 months ago

Some people find themselves awake at 3am with twenty Wikipedia tabs open. Just sayin'.

Liftyee5• 6 months ago

I've done that before (like many others), and occasionally still do. My current experience is that Wikipedia is decidedly finite (as far as content that is interesting enough for me to stick to, despite it being 3am). The slower pace and the conscious decision to choose what link I'll open next also regularly poke my "decision-making engine" to decide when to stop - no algorithmic feed of infinite scroll.

Of course, YMMV

jaimex2• 6 months ago

Can anyone sue them for the same to get a payout?

penguin_booze• 6 months ago

"Settling" should never be an option. When damaging behaviour comes to light, there should be no closure other than investigating and removing the underlying cause. Paying money doesn't make the crime go away.

chrisjj• 6 months ago

It is a private suit. Settling should always be an option.

tsoukase• 6 months ago

Large social media (Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook) have made me (and the world?) a great favor and need a login to scroll through their feed. Resist having an account and you are mostly free. It's like in order to get depended on drugs, you give all your privacy to the pharm company.

poopooracoocoo• 6 months ago

Plenty of things are addictive. I don't think this is one that should be intervened. I wish we had more personal responsibility today. America's meant to be the country of freedom, right?

TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin

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