I don’t do TikTok, you’ll be unsurprised to hear. No sassy dance videos or pictures of baby hippos around here. But many consumer facing brands absolutely do: it’s a vital channel for marketing and increasingly sales, particularly among younger people.
This investment seems jeopardised by the prospects of an intensified US-China trade war, particularly as anti-China sentiment is just about the only thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on.
Donald Trump has given mixed signals on banning the platform – due to happen mid January unless its Chinese owner Bytedance sells it – but is hardly above using it as a bargaining chip. And if TikTok falls foul of America, it wouldn’t be surprising if the UK followed suit.
Three thoughts come to mind. One, it won’t happen – there’s a long history of governments threatening tech platforms but they generally get nervous about separating swathes of their population from key parts of their lives.
Two, the fact that it could happen is a warning to brands not to put all their eggs in one basket. Like Covid for physical retail, political interference is social media’s ‘black swan’.
Third, the idea of a political crackdown makes for an interesting thought experiment, both as a business leader and as a participating member of society.
It could range from a TikTok ban, to wider social media restrictions for under 16s – as the Aussies are planning and Keir Starmer is reportedly considering here – to tougher financial restrictions related to misinformation, libel, harassment and copyright infringement, affecting adult users too.
Let’s say the government went nuclear and banned the lot. What would we expect to see?
- People will use them anyway. There’s always a workaround, which younger people would be much more likely to find.
- Some businesses would struggle, particularly those that have grown rapidly via social and haven’t had time to diversify.
- Hyper-growth would get harder. You don’t need viral videos on Instagram to pick up customers quickly, but for consumer-facing SMEs it can be a serious accelerant.
- The world would still turn. Companies would still reach customers, on aggregate about as effectively, but competition would suffer as big businesses outmuscle SMEs in TV, print and outdoor advertising.
- There would be less communication, but probably better information. Opinions are deeply divided over whether mainstream media is the source of or antidote to ‘fake news’, but I’d lead towards the latter.
- There would be more regional differences in culture but fewer bubbles. Social media makes it easier for two people living next to each other to have completely different world views and sources of facts upon which to base them. But it also makes it easier for ideas to spread globally at speed.
- We would have fewer, deeper connections. While some depend on online communities for their social health, I suspect it keeps more people from healthy in-person interaction
- Less freedom of speech. Both removing a platform and enforcing a ban would clearly diminish the ability of regular folk to be heard.
Would it be a good thing?
The fact that it’s difficult to imagine a world without social media – when you and I grew up without it – shows how deeply embedded it has become. I don’t know if it has made society better.
It’s certainly what adult users have chosen, although that hardly means it’s in their best interests (exhibit A for bad choices: the fried Mars bar). Thankfully we live in a society where people are free to make mistakes.
Children don’t choose social media as freely though. How could they, under the crushing weight of peer pressure? And the proliferation of bullying, hate speech and misinformation suggests that even adults’ free choices have wider negative consequences.
It’s complex. Even if we could put them all back in the bottle, from TikTok to Facebook, I’m not sure if the benefits would outweigh the costs.
What I do know is on balance I’m glad not to be growing up today, and I worry for my children.
Babies and bathwater come to mind. There are so many great things about the digital world that we’d mourn if we lost it – the ability to reach anyone instantly, the shrinking of the world.
If there’s a way to try to keep at least some of that while protecting our kids from the worst of it, then we owe it to them to at least try to find it.
