Culture Friday: Suing TikTok

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: t’s Friday the 11th of October, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: John, California and New York along with a dozen other states filed suit against TikTok this week. These state attorneys general accuse the social-media app of deceiving the public about the safety of TikTok, particularly for younger users. 

They claim TikTok’s design targets teens, that it harms their mental health, and that TikTok knows it and doesn’t care.

Features like endless scrolling and beauty filters are said especially to harm users, young girls in particular, by fostering body-image issues. And the states intend to impose financial penalties for, they say, prioritizing profit over child safety.

TikTok denies the allegations, but let’s listen to a little bit of California AG Rob Bonta talking about what he calls a uniquely bipartisan complaint about big tech.

BONTA: Our young people have enough to worry about as it is, our parents, our families, have more than enough to worry about without a large, sophisticated corporation targeting their young people and hurting them knowingly.

So, is he right?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I mean, right about the harms of social media and especially Tiktok, absolutely. I mean, this goes back years. 

You know, it reminds me of that line from the classic movie Tommy Boy, when Tommy says he graduated college and his friend goes, “Alright, just under a decade!” And, you know, it's kind of what's happening here. This is so late in the game, and it is interesting. 

Obviously, the government has stepped in at various times and targeted corporations that had caused harm, especially to minors. I mean, you can think, for example, of smoking and drinking, it always included some sort of age restriction. And why are we not there on this? Why is it that the way to step in here is to demand money that is then going to go to the government? You know, is that really going to be the solution that we need? First, if we're not actually encouraging parents to play this role, then any victories here are going to be short lived anyway. But financial penalties to whom? Like, who gets this money? 

And if what's worked in the past are some levels of age restrictions, you know, minimum ages to drink, to buy tobacco and that sort of stuff, why are we going in a different route here and now? Think about, for example, child safety restraints in automobiles. I mean, these are all ways in which the law can be upstream from culture and can introduce new ways of thinking about what is good for you and what is bad for you. 

You know, the state jumping in and just demanding money - I'm not actually sure that this is going to solve the problem in any real way. 

EICHER: I wonder, how deeply do they want to get into this about the harms of social media?

Some new government data came out this week the Centers for Disease Control. It was a national survey of American high-schoolers—The New York Times calling it the first-ever nationally representative survey—and it found 3.3 percent of high-school students identifying as transgender and another 2.2 percent questioning. So, that’s 5-1/2 percent, and this is all self-ID.

But you can make the argument that these kids are suffering some kind of harm. Just end-of-inquiry there. But the government’s own data finds 7-in-10 of these kids reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness which is significantly higher than for those who do not identify this way.

I bring it up because we all know what the author Abigail Schreier has found about how the spike in transgenderism among kids is very much a social contagion. And what spreads social contagion more than social media. I wonder if in the course of litigation, if it gets to that, what we find out about social-media culpability.

STONESTREET: Yeah, look, the further you dig, the further this elephant in the room becomes obvious. And it's now far enough along that we have enough time to have real data on three things: social media use, the mental-health crisis among young people, and the number of young people who are having an identity crisis that's taking the form of this trans phenomenon. 

And it's almost identical. It's just like you can lay these trend lines on top of one another, it's going to be obvious. And so either, you know, my guess is it's going to be ignored because there's, there's too many organizations right now, including government-sponsored or directly government-funded groups, that have a vested interest in keeping this trans phenomenon going.

And I also think that it's important to note that social media, in and of itself, I don't think is enough to explain the totality of the mental-illness problem that we're seeing. I don't think we would have the scope of the challenge that we have without social media. 

But I think it is a serious contributing factor making what is already a trend line on the ground worse. And that trend line on the ground, I think, can be traced more to the breakdown of important institutions of civil society, such as the family, and decreasing religiosity among young people and all kinds of other things. 

We're just not okay. I mean, that's the thing. We're just not a society right now by any measure that is doing well, certainly not flourishing. And the younger you are, the more acute you are sensing and feeling this crisis of identity that's kind of inflicted the whole Western world. So, it's just taken this form and social media feeds into it.

BROWN: We can’t end Culture Friday without talking about Jack Phillips and the big legal victory that means he’s finally able to live, speak, and work according to his Christian beliefs. This has been a long, 12-plus-year battle. John, as you think about your friend, Jack Phillips, what have you learned from him?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, the strength that this guy has, has been only surpassed by the joy and the peace that he has developed over this journey. That's the thing that stands out to me most. That's what I'm taking away from this. That's what I've learned from Jack. 

There is a sense that God has put him in this time, in this place, and that he can actually trust the Lord with the results. And I know we all say that, right? Like, you know, you do your best and you leave the results up to God. He's actually done this, and that has been in the face of the loss of comfort, the loss of financial security. 

And, you know, I want to say it's over, but God may have more in store for him. And I've told him every time I've seen him the last few times I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but he is a different person now than when he began it. And it's because of the Lord using what the Lord promises in the New Testament to use to conform us more into the image of His Son. Jack's a lot more like Jesus now than he was 12 years ago. And I think for him, that is a great source of joy and peace and meaning. 

And you know, one of the things that you and I talked about here is something that his longtime attorney, Kristen Waggoner, wrote about in WORLD Opinions back during the hearing of this particular case that has now been dismissed, is that Jack has played a role in what is maybe the most incredible conversion story of recent memory, at least, of the kind of the atheist turned Christian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which is just an amazing part of this story, you know. And you just think about they don't know each other, you know, Ayaan couldn't even remember Jack's name. 

And isn't that how God works? That little acts of faithfulness become bigger acts of faithfulness, and God brings that sort of increase out of that, which is, it's just really one of the remarkable stories, Christian stories of our generation. It really is. 

When you go back 12 years and you watch the Lord fulfill his promise to Jack, and you see the sort of impact that he's had on so many people, it's really stunning. I'm grateful for him, and I am grateful that, at least for now, it's over—and I pray forever it's over.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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