realize how easy it is for kids to access and appropriate content on tiktok? why is it designed that way? alex. that s a question coming from a kid himself, so he knows what he s talking about. that s right. i mean, this is a problem with all of the social media companies that have large youth populations is trying to separate out the kids from the adult content, which in some cases is explicitly allowed or allowed up to a certain limit is a real problem. we see it on instagram. we see it on twitter. we see it on snapchat. um and so part of the problem is that we don t create communities just for kids, um and there s been a debate of whether or not it would be better for these platforms to create special kid versions, which something that s been proposed. but has that become something that they do? the chinese version of the app as we just learned in a piece earlier in the show they have for under 14 year olds. they can only watch kid videos for a limited amount of time. yeah i mean, t
chinese government. the fact the matter is this. it will help facebook reels, which has been doing much better than it used to. it will help a lot of other other social media sites, primarily facebook. um and that s one of the issues here again. these legislators should be thinking more broadly across the entire social media spectrum . the things you re talking about teens are happening everywhere, and it s happening. even among adults. i mean twitter is no. you know, nirvana garden party. it s a very toxic place, and so this is a bigger issue that they should be dealing with. but in this case they re going to aim at a tiktok because of the links with the chinese government, etcetera. one last point i ll make is there s a lot of us investors in this thing. so you got to follow the money on this thing, because it s a lot of money for a lot of investors, and a lot of them are us investors, so that s going to be another issue. a very good point. i mean, they say 60% of tiktok is owned by
there s all cultural differences there. they weren t addressing. but yes, there s more they can do. and this is the thing. what i wanted in this hearing was to hear solutions to start to pick apart. what do you actually going to do to work on this? and you just gave the same answer over and over again, but partly because he was just batting them back and not having a chance to talk about. what are the tools where they technologies. all they talked about is the one thing they have done. the 60 minute time limit limit that no one that everyone can get around. get around that era. we only have about a minute left. but the, uh opponents of tiktok some of the people pushing this , you can t help but notice are their competitors. other social media companies. silicon valley vcs, who have financial interests in seeing tiktok s downfall. what role does that play in your mind? yeah that s that s imagine that they, of course they wanted chik talks the most popular product out there because it s
is definitely something that is a huge source of concern for the folks who have submitted questions. we have another question from enrique oliva. he s a dad from philadelphia. why do we think bani tiktok will help teen mental health? there s so many apps out there with the same feature. won t they just flock to another app with the same video shorts? i ll start with you. but i, alex, i see you nodding your head question. i don t i don t think that banning tiktok is going to improve youth mental health. the relationship between mental health and social media tiktok or otherwise, he s highly complex. there s a lot of data to suggest that there are some challenges associated with social media use. but there at the same time is a lot of data to suggest that there are some wonderful things that could happen on social media, and it could be a safe haven for some people for some for other folks who could be life saving anything alex unique about tiktok s algorithm that makes it
argument that tiktok is not an agent of china, but that fell on deaf ears even before he started speaking, many of these lawmakers had already made up their minds. there was a few exchanges that were incredibly tense, but also important where show to try to convince lawmakers of the fact that china doesn t have control over tiktok. but he was unsuccessful. listen to one of those back and forth. i have seen no evidence that the chinese government has access to that data. they have never asked us. we have not provided. you know what? i have asked that question. i find that actually preposterous. i have looked and i have seen no evidence of this happening. and in order to assure everybody here and all our users, our commitment is to move the data in into the united states to be stored on american soil by an american company overseen by american personnel. i don t believe that tiktok. has that you have said, or done anything to convince us that that that