OPINION:
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There is a world where everything distressing to Beijing suddenly disappears — no Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang, no Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, no Russian invasion of Ukraine, no protests in Hong Kong, no COVID-19 pandemic.
In this world, “ugliness,” poverty, and racial minorities need not be seen — indeed, they are actively shunned. In their place, visitors are on a “diet of darkness,” replete with hypersexualized minors and introductions to self-harm, suicide and unhealthy eating. Such a world — frightfully addictive, virulently angry, and entirely crafted by the Chinese Communist Party — is only a click away. We know because a majority of our generation (and around 55% of the U.S. population) lives in it on TikTok.
Last month, a flourish of President Biden’s signature put the app in serious jeopardy. Indeed, legislation to ban the platform (or a transfer of ownership to an entity that is not aligned with the Chinese Communist Party) has been a bicameral success.
It’s now law. Yet the hard work of enforcing the law, enduring the inevitable legal challenges, and selling the “ban” to the American people remains. Considering that Generation Z has not been (nor will be) silent on the issue, we unequivocally call on our generation to support the coming “ban” and marshal the legislation beyond the president’s desk. More than this, Gen Z should recognize TikTok for the threat that it is. Here to stay or gone forever, it will not be the last of its kind.
We get it. TikTok’s narratives are problematic but not necessarily unique. They are simply the product of our cultural fidelity to free speech, right? Indeed, as a common retort from our peers would point out, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube (among others) provide havens for similar rhetoric and disinformation.
What this hand wave misses is the real danger outlined above. These trends are but the calling card of an uncurbed, Chinese Communist Party-tooled TikTok. Born of carefully devised propagandization, they herald the nonexistence of true free speech on TikTok and betray its successful weaponization by the Chinese government.
Indeed, TikTok is a weapon, trained upon the most vulnerable (Gen Zers). It is dividing, distracting and leveraging young Americans for foreign gain. It is also a harrowing proof of concept, with worrying applications beyond one platform.
We study China and spend enough time on Capitol Hill not to have TikTok. The bipartisan push against TikTok was illuminating and in our view a long time coming. That a majority of Democrats and Republicans alike see TikTok as a threat should testify to its dangers. Even so, most of our generation has yet to see TikTok as a weapon.
Indeed, “banning” TikTok is somewhat taboo on our campuses. Most of our friends would testify to interacting exclusively with “benign” TikTok. Friends who scroll for hours daily tell us that they never engage with posts actively denying the Uyghur genocide, peddling conspiracy theories, or promoting death. So, why the fuss?
This is TikTok’s malign magic. It thrives when viewed through this prism of laxity and supposed self-responsibility. China quietly preserves “useful” narratives, doing away with contravening ones. More loudly, push notifications to nudge user behavior (like the recent “grassroots” counterattack on the House TikTok legislation).
Meanwhile, Communist Party cronies plunder Americans’ personal data. All are conveniently swept from view by an expert algorithm. In the mix, our friends — the generation best poised to contend with an ascendant China — are lulled into complacency. Sadly, our peers are more likely than any other age or demographic group to oppose the recent House bill.
“I don’t care if the CCP has access to my data.” It’s a striking but frequent line on our campuses. Many Gen Zers are yet to be convinced why the Chinese Communist Party would ever be concerned with their data, what they could do with it, and why it matters.
It’s all a bit stratospheric, even overblown. For Gen Z, information insecurity is the norm. Many feel they sell their birthright in terms and conditions agreements daily. What more do they have to lose? Even if China wanted American data, theirs would be far from the top of the list, if on the list at all.
This is an unintentionally individualistic view of the issue. The Chinese government does not gain value from one American’s data. It gains value from having the data of the 100 million-plus American users and wielding such bounty against us. The value to the Chinese Communist Party and the danger to Americans is in leveraging the aggregate.
Chinese President Xi Jinping already has an iron grip on the information ecosystem at home, and his grip on ours is tightening. The boon of such near-limitless data collection to a competitor (in both kinetic and soft warfare) is unimaginable in its breadth and effect.
China minces few words in its aim to meet and defeat the United States. TikTok, the Chinese Communist Party’s most able information weapon, has placed millions of American Gen Zers on the front lines of a “cold-turning-hot war,” which promises a half century more akin to the dystopian world of TikTok’s worst narratives than anything we have ever known.
If Mr. Xi’s bets are right, TikTok (or a look-alike app) stays longer, and a coming war may be over before it has even begun. Gen Z should be worried.
• Ted Bossong is a senior at Wake Forest University and president of the Wake Forest chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society. Zacarias Negron is a junior at Vanderbilt University and president of the Vanderbilt chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society.
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