TikTok. . . A Message For Parents

Are you aware that in the rapidly changing landscape of social media, TikTok use is on the rise among our kids? The latest research from the Pew Research Center reports that two-thirds of our teens report using TikTok, making the platform the second-most-used social media platform among the adolescent age group, putting it just behind first-place YouTube. As we always say to parents about their kids and social media, You might erronerously believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. . . or your kids. But the reality is that what you do take time to know could save your kids from lots of pain, heartache, and negative outcomes! Parents, the bottom-line is this: all of us need to wise-up!

Culture-watcher Mark Bauerlein recently did all of us a favor in his First Things article, “What Parents Can Do About TikTok.” Bauerlein has dug down deep into what most of us don’t know, but what we need to know. I want to point you to Bauerlein’s short, eye-opening, and helpful article so that you might be better prepared to understand and respond to the influence TikTok is having on our kids.

Bauerlein writes specifically about a lawsuits that are being filed against TikTok and other social media companies, all because of the harmful effects of these platforms on kids. . .

I have some interesting news for parents who worry about what social media are doing to their kids. If you go to this website, you will see a page with the heading, “JOIN THE FIGHT: Stop TikTok from Destroying America’s Youth.” The host of the site is ClaimsHero, a consumer arbitration platform that helps little guys battle big guys in arbitration cases. ClaimsHero is not itself a law firm, only a service that helps people with claims get in touch with the right attorneys and that shows them how to manage the complex arbitration process.

I learned about ClaimsHero while writing about lawsuits that have been filed against social media companies for marketing dangerous products to kids. We should treat those corporations as we do cigarette companies, knowing that nothing pleases the owners more than a twelve-year-old who’s on the platform three hours a day, I argued. More than half of the states in America are now suing Meta for damaging the mental and social condition of our youth, mainly through Facebook and Instagram. I hope they succeed.

The ClaimsHero case is a bit different. The company has joined forces with attorneys Kyle Roche of Kyle Roche P.A. and Vel Freedman of Freedman Normand Friedland LLP to target TikTok, arguing specifically that TikTok needs to be held accountable for allegedly designing its app to exploit and addict American children. Needless to say, the more children are drawn and held to the app, the more TikTok maximizes profits.

Bauerlein goes on to interview Kelvin Goode, the CEO of ClaimsHero, to learn more about the negative influence of the TikTok platform. You can continue reading Bauerlein’s article here.

After reading Bauerlein’s article, we invite you to download CPYU’s free “A Parents’ Primer on Social Networking”