US universities caught up in crackdown on TikTok

US policymakers are rushing to ban the social media platform TikTok, pulling their public universities into what experts regard as a crusade that has little value for national security, and that could block related research but might benefit student mental health.

The governments of about half of US states have taken legal action against TikTok or banned it outright because of suspicions and some evidence that the Chinese-owned short-form video hosting site might be collecting user data for harmful purposes.

In some cases – including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, South Dakota and Oklahoma – the bans have been extended or interpreted to include public universities and the internet systems used by their students and faculty.

Yet numerous experts questioned the wisdom behind the bans, especially as they apply to academic settings, as they appear relatively easy for many students to sidestep but problematic for researchers looking to study the social effects of TikTok and other online exchanges.

The political concern is driven by the suspicion that TikTok, because of its Chinese ownership, could enable various abuses from Beijing, including tracking individual Americans, manipulating public opinion, creating entry points to computer systems, and blackmailing key US officials in government and beyond.

“I understand why that may not seem like a big deal to folks who are in college,” a Republican senator leading calls for bans, Marco Rubio of Florida, told Times Higher Education. “But remember, this is the same regime that steals American research, spies on US reporters, censors anti-government speech and intervenes in American elections.”

Security experts were more divided on the question, but generally sceptical of such attitudes. One, Holden Triplett, an adjunct professor of foreign service at Georgetown University and a White House director for counterintelligence in the Trump administration, said US colleges should remove TikTok from their computer systems and strongly recommend that students and others do the same.

But beyond that, attempts to ban it from campus likely would prove futile, Mr Triplett said. “They’d be playing a cat-and-mouse game with college kids, and they’d lose,” he said.

Another, Graham Webster, a research scholar at Stanford University specialising in cybersecurity, argued that since so many companies in the world of social media and far beyond already have so much access to huge amounts of personal data – and readily sell it to any buyers, including foreign governments – it hardly makes sense to single out TikTok.

“This has become a politicised issue that is not really about data security or the security of the national discourse,” he said, “but is really about making TikTok into an example, or a sort of manifestation, of a broader political struggle around what to do regarding China.”

Attempts to ban TikTok did, however, find some support among experts in mental health, who regard the platform’s much-debated national security considerations as a matter of secondary importance. While all social media raise health concerns, TikTok – with its emphasis on brief attention-getting videos – seemed especially problematic and addictive, said Marc Berkman, chief executive of the Organisation for Social Media Safety.

Various research studies have tied excessive use of TikTok to depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, eating disorders, educational losses and sleep deficits, Mr Berkman said.

Yet rather than trying to ban the use of platforms such as TikTok, Mr Berkman said, universities should be trying harder to teach students about safe use. And on that score, he said, US colleges were doing quite poorly, appearing far less receptive than schools to such efforts.

“Colleges, with much more urgency, need to start facilitating education on these issues,” he said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com