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Is TikTok a Threat to Public Health? · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:00
  Is TikTok a threat to public health?
• 0:03
  That was one of Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy's concerns when he co-sponsored the bill that forces ByteDance to divest the social media app.
• 0:11
  Representative Krishnamoorthy is with us today to share his take.
• 0:22
  Welcome to Care Talk, America's home for incisive debate about healthcare business and policy.
• 0:27
  I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group.
• 0:29
  And I'm John Driscoll, senior advisor to Walgreens Health.
• 0:32
  Join the ever -growing Care Talk community on LinkedIn, where you can dig deep into healthcare business and policy topics, access Care Talk content, and interact with the hosts.
• 0:42
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• 0:46
  Raj, welcome to Care Talk.
• 0:48
  I'd love it if there's been a lot of talk about...
• 0:51
  Chinese influence on TikTok and how this is a national security issue.
• 0:56
  But I'd love it if you expand on why the separation, not the ban of TikTok, is so important and as a public health issue that I think has not been adequately addressed.
• 1:10
  What's the risk there and what are we trying to accomplish in separating TikTok and ByteDance and starting to take control of this major social media force?
• 1:21
  Well, thank you, John, for having me on and your attention to this important issue.
• 1:27
  Originally, the issue with regard to TikTok has been its ownership by ByteDance, a Chinese company that is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
• 1:37
  Just to give you a sense, the editor in chief of ByteDance is the secretary of the CCP cell that's embedded at the highest levels of ByteDance to control the company.
• 1:49
  and to make sure all of its platforms, including TikTok, adhere to quote unquote, correct political direction.
• 1:56
  And so they have access under Chinese law to all the user data of the 170 million Americans who are on TikTok.
• 2:06
  And they also control the algorithm that feeds the content on the platform.
• 2:11
  Those were the two primary sources of concerns.
• 2:15
  I do think there's a public health dimension to this because, Very interestingly, the content on the TikTok platform is very different than other similar social media platforms, whether it's Instagram Reels or whether it's even Douyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok.
• 2:40
  Basically, researchers show that whereas on Douyin, the Chinese platform, they talk about a healthy living and STEM and topics that might otherwise naturally pop up through, you know, your everyday social media discourse.
• 3:02
  For some reason on our platform, the TikTok USA platform, it's very different.
• 3:07
  And as you know, from your research and others, there's a lot of talk of suicidal ideation.
• 3:15
  drug paraphernalia, over sexualization of teenagers and so forth.
• 3:19
  At the end of the day, the government does not have a place in censoring content or basically having any role in deciding what the content should be.
• 3:32
  However, if it's distorted by a foreign adversary for potentially harming our interests, that's another conversation.
• 3:45
  Do you think that there's any positives from what TikTok does from a public health standpoint?
• 3:49
  Well, I think that TikTok has some very interesting videos.
• 3:54
  I'm sure that there are probably some people who do videos with good content, healthy content, content that helps young people in a positive way.
• 4:07
  But I am concerned about that foreign adversary control of the platform, which at the end of the day is...
• 4:15
  really what's motivating this legislation.
• 4:18
  Raja, I think it's hard for people to sort of imagine a Russian government purchase of a major media company.
• 4:30
  Like we wouldn't want Putin to buy the Washington Post.
• 4:33
  I'm not sure we would allow it.
• 4:35
  We've got a lot of federal regulations regarding even corporate ownership of things like radio stations and local TV stations.
• 4:43
  It feels like there's a gaping hole in our regulatory infrastructure that to some degree this requirement to separate the Chinese Communist Party's ownership and direction of it's unclear whether we can even make the distinction of this company that as sort of an emergent threat that I don't think was ever imagined by the regulators.
• 5:07
  Is that really the problem that your legislation is out there to solve?
• 5:13
  It's a very good point, John.
• 5:15
  You're absolutely correct that, you know, already there are ownership limits with regard to newspapers, radio stations, TV stations.
• 5:27
  What we're saying is let's apply that same common sense limit with regard to social media platforms updating that principle for the 21st century.
• 5:38
  So this is nothing new.
• 5:39
  And indeed it's something that really from the founding of the country, you know, leaders have always been concerned about, which is foreign control and especially foreign adversary control of media outlets.
• 5:54
  I know that TikTok was taken by surprise.
• 5:57
  I think that this bill actually moved forward, but it moved forward with very wide support across both parties, both houses of Congress and from the White House.
• 6:08
  Were you surprised by that?
• 6:09
  And...
• 6:10
  What do you think accounts for it?
• 6:12
  Well, we actually did a lot of groundwork for about one year, lining up stakeholders around this bill.
• 6:19
  And I think that because of that groundwork, we were able to move into the consideration of the bill with a lot of momentum.
• 6:27
  Now, once it got introduced, we obviously had to fight ferocious lobbying by TikTok and ByteDance and even the Chinese Communist Party.
• 6:39
  But...
• 6:39
  Very interestingly, they actually committed a big error in their advocacy of the bill, namely, they actually sent out a push notification to millions of users with a pop -up that appeared to compel them to call their member of Congress to lobby against the bill in order to use the app.
• 7:02
  And so what ended up happening was they ended up essentially getting thousands of minor children to flood our offices with phone calls.
• 7:13
  And these phone calls amounted to stuff like, you know, what's Congress, what's a congressman, and can I have my TikTok back?
• 7:20
  And that particular ploy, that influence campaign, if you will, illustrated for many people exactly why we needed this legislation, namely to make sure it's not in the hands of a foreign adversary in a moment of national peril.
• 7:38
  And so it converted a lot of lean yeses into hell yeses on the day of the votes.
• 7:46
  I think the anecdote that I had heard, which was really weird, was that in some cases, TikTok users motivated by this, you know, you know, ersatz political campaign were posing as children of congressmen.
• 8:01
  They're posing as different people to try to manipulate Congress.
• 8:05
  And I...
• 8:06
  I think it's a great example of Congress standing up for common sense, but it was shocking how quickly TikTok could basically turn on an entire national network of foe influencers.
• 8:20
  And I think it almost demonstrated the threat in real time.
• 8:27
  Were you worried at all about how TikTok might win here?
• 8:33
  We were a little bit taken aback by this influence campaign of, as you said, foe influencers.
• 8:39
  And yes, you're correct that at least one of my colleagues told me personally that someone called in posing as his son, asking him to speak with them and giving their TikTok back.
• 8:52
  And he called his son.
• 8:53
  Of course, his son said, no, I never called you.
• 8:56
  And he was one of those people I mentioned that went from a lean yes into a strong yes.
• 9:03
  I was concerned a little bit about how this campaign might be run and what would be the results of it, but I'm really glad that people were very sophisticated in the way they received the campaign and it completely backfired.
• 9:21
  You've been quite clear that on the national security side that ByteDance's control of TikTok is the issue rather than TikTok itself.
• 9:29
  And I'm wondering, we've talked about it a little bit, But whether you think that's gonna be true for public health too, or if we were just looking at TikTok on its own, if it would be just problematic just by the essence of how it operates and just the form that it takes.
• 9:46
  I think that you're correct to point out the concern about public health with regard to these short form videos.
• 9:54
  Some people call them vertical videos.
• 9:58
  And...
• 9:59
  I think there has to be more research done on this particular topic.
• 10:02
  And I, as a parent of three kids, am very concerned about this.
• 10:08
  I think for purposes of this legislation, however, while I'm concerned about the public health perspective with regard to social media in general and TikTok in particular, we just don't want it to be in the hands of a foreign adversary.
• 10:29
  And I suspect that if there are public health concerns, and I think there are, there are legitimate public health concerns about social media and certainly TikTok, those concerns become even more pronounced when the algorithm is in the hands of a foreign adversary because they get to manipulate it in ways that heighten those concerns, that kind of put our concerns on steroids, if you will.
• 10:56
  And so that's kind of another, part of this that I'm very concerned about.
• 11:02
  It's really an interesting phenomenon that this social media platform, which I don't think all adults realize, there's over a billion users and half of them are between the ages of 10 and 29.
• 11:14
  And so in a weird sort of way, if we're worried at all about social media, we should be worried most about TikTok.
• 11:21
  And the point that you made, I think, can't be underscored enough that what the owners permit, their own teenagers to see is radically different than what they incent, create, and target for our kids.
• 11:37
  And it's not that kids are different, it's because the control, direction, and priorities are different.
• 11:42
  And I think it reinforces even from a public health rationale, just the difference in behavior between what's controlled and directed in China and what is controlled and directed in Chicago.
• 12:00
  It just underscores this point of why we shouldn't allow foreign adversaries because frankly, they're not unhappy.
• 12:09
  With instability in the US creates opportunity for an adversary.
• 12:15
  That's right.
• 12:16
  I think that they have a unique insight into our vulnerabilities given their control of the platform.
• 12:26
  their knowledge of what is popular, what is selling, so to speak, and they can kind of manipulate it in ways that we would never do here in the US necessarily, certainly not the government.
• 12:43
  And so, or we would not permit that to happen under our laws.
• 12:49
  And so because of that, we just have to, we have to be safe.
• 12:54
  And while I totally agree with my colleagues and others who think that much more needs to be done with regard to social media, we have to protect our privacy from not only foreign hostile actors, but foreign actors and domestic ones.
• 13:09
  This particular bill, this law was a first step on the road toward more comprehensive regulation of digital media, especially with regard to our young people.
• 13:22
  John, I think you mentioned it's interesting that China deals differently with what they allow than what happens in Chicago.
• 13:29
  On the other hand, in Silicon Valley, some of the parents that are active in running social media companies are also pretty careful about what their own kids get to do, which might tell us something about it.
• 13:41
  I think that the national security angle and the bite dance connection make this a very logical first place to go after.
• 13:50
  And Congressman, as you're saying, it's kind of as a first step.
• 13:53
  Is the TikTok divestment action just a first step in dealing with the broader issues of social media and mental health?
• 14:01
  Or do you think it will likely be just a one -off?
• 14:05
  No, I think it could be the first step.
• 14:08
  Interestingly, what this exercise in terms of meeting with different stakeholders did was it got us all talking to each other in a way that perhaps we weren't before.
• 14:22
  And obviously we work together for a successful result.
• 14:25
  I think that we can once again assemble the community of stakeholders in Congress who have concerns with regard to privacy, concerns with regard to children and public health, and see how we can apply some of the principles that we learned through this whole process with regard to TikTok and bite dance to other topics.
• 14:51
  And so I'm really looking forward.
• 14:52
  As you know, I think we are one of the few countries now without a comprehensive approach with regard to digital privacy.
• 15:01
  And so it's about time that we got our act together.
• 15:05
  So I'm really looking forward to that.
• 15:07
  Plus dealing with children's issues and public health in general.
• 15:11
  Well, that's it for yet another episode of Care Talk.
• 15:14
  We've been talking today about TikTok, about bite dance, about social media's impact on children's mental health.
• 15:22
  I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group, along with John Driscoll, senior advisor at Walgreens Health.
• 15:27
  And we've been very fortunate to have along with us Congressman Rajakrishnan Murthy, who is a co -sponsor of this bill and a leader in the space.
• 15:36
  Rajak, thank you so much for joining us today on Care Talk.
• 15:39
  Thank you so much, John and David.
• 15:41
  And thank you for your attention always to the public health of our country.