“TikTok is a weapon being used to groom our kids,” says Chaya Raichik, creator of the popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok.
Raichik joined lawmakers, policy experts, and parents Thursday outside the U.S. Capitol for a rally calling for Chinese-owned TikTok to be banned in America.
“Every single day in America, our children are under attack,” Raichik said, explaining that she has spent the past two years exposing content on TikTok that targets young people with pro-transgender messages.
Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account on Twitter republishes videos and other material from the Left.
“TikTok is designed to attract our impressionable youth, and groomers and predators know this and are using it to their advantage,” Raichik said while wearing a “Ban TikTok” T-shirt.
“Through TikTok, trans activists have a platform to groom children by telling them to cut off contact with their parents and offering them guidance on gender transition using harmful information,” Raichik said.
The Ban TikTok rally took place while TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and answered lawmakers’ questions regarding security concerns over the Chinese app.
Calls to ban the social media platform center around not only its harmful content, but concerns over the Chinese Communist Party’s access to personal user data. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing and is subject to Chinese law requiring companies to make data available to the government.
“China is the top national security threat to the United States, and they’re laughing at us,” Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., said during the rally, adding that China is “laughing at us while they use TikTok to destroy America’s youth with the support of [President] Joe Biden and the radical Left.”
In China, officials limit use of the Chinese version of the app to 40 minutes a day for children under age 14. But meanwhile, “American children waste countless hours a day … on videos fed by the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, said at the rally.
The fact that China is limiting the app’s use by children should be “the first indicator that TikTok is not safe and has no place has no place in our country,” Nehls said.
About 150 million Americans have TikTok accounts, according to the social media platform. More than 30 states and the federal government have moved to ban TikTok from government-issued devises, citing security concerns.
Fully 67% of American teens are on TikTok, Kara Frederick, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, said at the rally. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“Sixteen percent of American teens said they are on TikTok almost constantly,” Frederick said. “Thirty percent of parents claim that their pre-teens, 9- to 11-year-olds, use this platform.”
“The next phase of teen despair, of children’s despair, is here and it’s delivered by a Chinese algorithm. We have to ban it today,” Frederick said.
Although calls continue for banning TikTok nationwide, Tiffany Justice, founder of Mom’s for Liberty, says parents can begin by banning TikTok in their homes today.
“The more of us that say no to TikTok in our homes with our kids, the better off the future of our country will be,” Justice said.
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