TikTok challenge! TikTok users vs. Atlantic readers

In recent weeks, pro-Israel lawmakers and pundits have come to a disturbing conclusion about America’s youth: they’ve been brainwashed by TikTok into supporting the Palestinians in the Israel-Palestinian war. The nation’s very moral fiber is at stake.

“How did we reach a point where a majority of young Americans hold such a morally bankrupt view of the world?”lamented Rep. Mike Ghallager (R-Wisc.) “Where many young Americans were rooting for terrorists who had kidnapped American citizens—and against a key American ally? Where were they getting the raw news to inform this upside-down world view?”

“The short answer is, increasingly, via social media and predominantly TikTok,” he concluded, before baselessly claiming the Chinese government is weaponizing TikTok to undermine Israel and America. Marco Rubio told Sean Hannity that TikTok’s “misinformation and indoctrination” was responsible for college students’ opinions about the Oct. 7th attack. Sen. Josh Hawley too weighed in. “While data security issues are paramount, less often discussed is TikTok’s power to radically distort the world picture that America’s young people encounter,” Hawley wrote, adding that there’s been a surge of “anti-Israel content on TikTok.”

30 celebrities confronted TikTok’s leadership in a call last week. “What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis. Shame on you,” the actor Sacha Baron Cohen, who’s never dabbled in offensive stereotypes, said. On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host expressed perplexed shock that bin-Laden’s “Letter to America” had gone viral on the platform. “The kids now have jumped on TikTok from supporting Hamas to supporting Osama bin Laden,” Maher said. In fact, the video of a young woman reading bin Laden’s letter wasn’t trending on TikTok—until a conservative commentator posted it to Twitter as an example of TikTok perfidy. Only then, and after the attendant hand-wringing, did it actually go viral. Maher failed to mention this somewhat important fact, instead denouncing the youth for their ignorance. “Yeah, they didn’t learn any history. That’s the problem,” Maher said.

Anyway, I don’t even feel like debunking this particularly ridiculous moral panic about the Kids and their ticking and tocking and the Chinese plot to take America down with a fifth column of college students (actually here: the kids were more likely to sympathize with the plight of Palestinians before TikTok). But the stupid TikTok story is part of a larger narrative. Daily, in op-eds and on old-people social media like Twitter, wise elders lament young people’s view of the conflict as bereft of history, the workings of diplomacy, geopolitical realities… they’re just uninformed, the young.

OK then: TikTok challenge. Who might be better informed about the war, a young person looking up Israel-Gaza war on TikTok or an Atlantic reader?

The top story on the Atlantic site today is about “The Other Ozempic Revolution.” See, ozempic users feel stigmatized by people who don’t want to take the medication to lose weight. The dynamic portends poorly for America’s social fabric. “The new drugs will transform people’s relationship with eating—and with one another,” the author observes.

How so? The drug may end up “changing the dynamics of a family that has always had a “thin sister,” or a couple who bonded over a shared love of nachos and beer, or friends who stay in touch by sharing a restaurant meal.” It’ll be confusing, for sure. When family friends ask ‘How’s the porker? And how about the ‘thin sister?’ how will people know they’re talking about? 🤔.

The second story on the front page informs us that “Jason Momoa’s manliness overwhelms “‘SNL.’” As we scroll down, based on the headlines, we learn that New York City’s cats are no match for the rats. That, apparently, Trump uses apocalyptic rhetoric. And that “hospitals have gotten too nice” (?). There is no mention, anywhere on the page, that the civilian death toll in Gaza is quickly nearing 12,000, that the UN has said that al-Shifa hospital has become a “death zone”—certainly no mention that the IDF has yet to provide evidence Hamas operated an elaborate secret military city underneath. As people in Gaza starve, The Atlantic frets about awkward social interactions around a drug that works by making you eat less ...

Let’s go to TikTok. Type in Israel Gaza war. The first video that comes up for me is a story, reported on the ground at the Rafah crossing, about Palestinian laborers who were detained by Israeli police and allegedly handcuffed, blindfolded, and forced to sleep on the ground. “The police treated us like lifestock,” one said. The story is by NPR. If you go onto their website, it’s not visible—front page websites are carefully curated to reflect newsorthiness and while there’s plenty of Gaza coverage, this story didn’t make the cut. I learned something new from TikTok. The second video is a CBS segment about the Israeli hostage whose body was recently found. I then watched an AlJazeera video segment about the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp, which killed 100 people. “Here they are! They are children! We’re placing them in bags!” a man cries out in agony thrusting his unbearably heavy loads—literally sacks of dead children—at the camera. And then you get a video interview with an Israeli drone operator who talks about the moral weight of the decisions he has to make.

Who learned more about global affairs today, the TikTok gen-zer or the boomer Atlantic reader?

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