Tik Tok Danger To Teens Main Focus Of Hearing

Tik Tok CEO Chew During Congressional Hearing

U.S. lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Thursday accused TikTok of serving harmful content and inflicting "emotional distress" on young users, grilling the Chinese-owned app's CEO on the company's outsized influence on teens, reports Reuters.

The hearing, which was TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew's first appearance before Congress, comes at a critical moment for the wildly popular video app that is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company. Lawmakers are pressuring the Biden administration to ban the app from the country.

U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle quizzed Chew on whether American user data could be accessed by the Chinese government, but also demanded he address examples of harmful content posted on the app.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, kicked off the hearing saying that within minutes of creating an account on TikTok, the content algorithm promotes self-harm and eating disorder content, and encourages "dangerous" challenges that can put kids' lives at risk.

Like other social media platforms, TikTok has long faced scrutiny over its policing of content on the app. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that fights hate speech and disinformation, said in a December report that TikTok can "bombard" kids as young as 13 with eating disorder and self-harm content.

Chew told the lawmakers that TikTok takes the mental health of its users very seriously and refers people asking about suicide or death it to the platform’s safety page.

“We aren’t buying it,” Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s chair and a Washington Republican, said of TikTok’s arguments of why the service is safe.

Rodgers said the app’s wide popularity — used by 150 million Americans — is precisely why it poses such a threat.