I guess it's dumb for all the dopamine addicts who spend hours scrolling, though I think they should be free to rot their brains.

Though you're kidding yourself if you don't think China will use the data for all sorts of espionage, because bytedance employees have already been caught spying on journalists. It's also been shown that Facebook and YouTube can inadvertently radicalize individuals. Now throw the weight of the CCP behind an even more addictive app and you can see where this is going.

Personally I think it's a win for all teenagers and younger given the direct ties of mental illness to social media. We'll be looking back at these social media years like we now look back at kids playing with asbestos.

I don't think FB is much better fwiw. their algo's have been shown to be bad for kids mental health time and time again. They also don't have a great record when it comes to privacy / data. If we're gonna ban tiktok we should also ban the bad practices that fb is doing.