Why Is TikTok Bad? Why Some People Object To The App

You probably couldn’t convince TikTok’s two billion users that the app is “bad.” However, there’s been a constant negative drumbeat from TikTok critics ever since it launched in the Western hemisphere in the late 2010s, and the US government’s recent attempts to ban or force the sale of the social media platform has triggered more negativity.

Let’s look at why some people claim that TikTok is a bad influence — or even dangerous.

Arguments Against TikTok Use

Most critics focus on the app’s influence and impact on children and young adults, whose brains aren’t fully developed until they’re well into their twenties. Others, though, say the potential issues caused by TikTok (and, to be fair, many other social media platforms) can affect all users.

Some of these claims are extrapolated from research, but others are simplified theories based on anecdotal evidence. We present the arguments without trying to prove or disprove them.

• Many TikTok videos last only a few seconds and all can be scrolled through rapidly, contributing to modern attention spans growing shorter and shorter.
• The common focus on beauty and weight loss in TikTok content can cause impressionable viewers to develop inferiority complexes or even body dysmorphia.
• Younger viewers are often exposed to posts from users undergoing mental health struggles, especially in their For You feed, potentially worsening existing issues like depression and suicidal thoughts.
• Some TikTok challenges are dangerous to try, and a few have led to deaths among participants.
• TikTok’s addictive nature can lead users to spend an unhealthy amount of time on the app, forgoing healthy human interaction and other types of entertainment.
• Readily-available videos on controversial or complicated subjects have become a substitute for legitimate research among many people, making it easy for some users to promulgate misleading, false, and potentially dangerous narratives, while contributing to declines in cognitive processing ability, reading comprehension, and research skills.

To repeat, TikTok isn’t alone among apps in potentially causing some of these issues, and most haven’t been definitively shown to be problematic enough to describe the platform as “bad.” The arguments and claims persist, however.

Why Does the US Government Think TikTok is Bad?

The American government isn’t the only one that has problems with TikTok. The platform has been banned in several countries including India, Nepal, Somalia, and Afghanistan, mostly because of fears of TikTok’s effects on children or content deemed improper.

Many more nations, like the UK, Australia, Belgium, and New Zealand, have banned installation of the app on some or all government phones and devices — for the same reason that it’s banned on American government devices and is in danger of being banned completely in the US: security. (The American ban was briefly and temporarily averted in early 2025.)

TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which like all Chinese firms, is required by that country’s laws to turn over any information it gathers to the nation’s intelligence and state security agencies when requested. And ByteDance collects a lot of information about TikTok users throughout the world.

That’s given rise to not only concerns, but warnings from multiple countries’ security agencies, that TikTok poses a major security risk.

For example, user data could theoretically be taken from ByteDance by Chinese agencies to conduct blackmail, phishing, or other cyberattacks against individuals in sensitive positions, or wage active espionage operations against the United States or any other nation.

That could certainly be construed as “bad” — and it’s why many developed nations no longer allow TikTok on government officials’ phones and devices, and why the app may be completely banned in America.