More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites; Pew Research Center, November 15, 2023

KATERINA EVA MATSA, Pew Research Center; More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites

[Kip Currier: This November 2023 Pew Research Center article about news consumption by Americans--particularly increasing numbers of teens--who use TikTok should be concerning to anyone who has an interest in democratic principles, informed citizenries, accuracy of information, national security, and public health.

It's not going to be easy, though, to stem access to dis- and misinformation and instill more guardrails against conspiracy theories and hate speech (--looking at you too, Elon/Twitter-cum-X) for Big Tech platforms like TikTok (though states like Montana are trying to provide bulwarks) that are well-documented for-profit purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.

One step in raising awareness of social media platform concerns is to get more informed about TikTok's meteoric rise from new-kid-on-the-social-media-block just a few years ago to prodigious social media sensation/Trojan horse threat today: the Washington Post's May 2023 "How TikTok went from teen sensation to political pariah" provides an informative timeline of TikTok's onset and vitality.

A significant concern of TikTok usage and market penetration is public health-related: Social media companies like TikTok and Meta utilize known (and unknown "trade secret-shielded") design features that foster addictive consumption of their content, which, in part, is having documented negative impacts on mental health. Bloomberg's April 2023 article "TikTok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids" is one example.

Ongoing concerns about TikTok's threats to U.S. national security and cybersecurity have also prompted the Biden administration to speak out forcefully in March 2023.

The burden of addressing the "information threats" these sites present is going to be on schools and public libraries: to advance "social media information literacy" and critical thinking skills in young people, as well as persons of all ages. Unfortunately, libraries are, in many instances, jumping pell-mell on the TikTok bandwagon: rhapsodically promoting the platform, both tacitly and overtly, without commensurately weighing the substantive downsides of its use for community engagement and messaging that, admittedly, can have positive upshots, like combatting rising rates of book challenges and bans.

Notice, too, on television the increased Public Relations/Crisis Management "feel-good ad" campaigning that TikTok--like Meta/Facebook--has been engaging in the past few years to counter reporting about the burgeoning amounts of disinformation and misinformation on these sites, as well as other real concerns highlighted above. These ads employ folksy, "nothing-to-worry-about-on-here" messages in attempts to downplay the genuine dangers that they represent to individuals and democratic societies. The reality, however, is that there is bonafide "stuff" to worry about regarding TikTok and its ilk -- and ample evidence of these intersectional problems to vindicate taking affirmative steps now to mitigate and push back against their negative impacts.

Are you listening, U.S. Congress and state legislatures?]

"A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.

In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

TikTok, primarily known for short-form video sharing, has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report ever using the platform – as well as young adults."

A Brief History of Banned Books in America; Smithsonian Magazine, October 5, 2023

Chris Klimek , Smithsonian Magazine; A Brief History of Banned Books in America

"Klimek: And one of the professions most affected by all of this are librarians. How is this affecting librarians across the country?

Hayden: Well, librarians, we have mugs and T-shirts that say, “Librarians, the original search engines.” So we’ve been involved with information and the internet since it’s really been widely available, because that was another way for us to provide information to people, health information, all types of things. And so librarians have been at the forefront of looking at: What are some of the safeguards? How can we be better prepared to be those guides on the side when they’re surfing? People still use public libraries, for instance, as one of their major sources of health information.

Klimek: Yeah, that’s something that I hadn’t thought of, this idea that yes, now anyone with internet access has access to all of this information of widely varying quality. But the librarians can still help us sort the legitimate stuff from the cynical and fabricated stuff. That media literacy seems critical.

Hayden: “Information literacy” is the term that we use, and it’s really that same thing, but also in this new world. And that’s going to be even more of an aspect when you think about artificial intelligence."

The Librarian War Against QAnon; The Atlantic, February 18, 2021

 Barbara Fister; The Atlantic; 

The Librarian War Against QAnon

As “Do the research” becomes a rallying cry for conspiracy theorists, classical information literacy is not enough.

"We are experiencing a moment that is exposing a schism between two groups: those who have faith that there is a way to arrive at truth using epistemological practices that originated during the Enlightenment, and those who believe that events and experiences are portents to be interpreted in ways that align with their personal values."

Health Misinformation Is Rampant on Instagram; The Atlantic, January 10, 2019

Video, The Atlantic; Health Misinformation Is Rampant on Instagram

"When it comes to health advice, don’t take Instagram’s word for it. The platform is rampant with misinformation about wellness, argues the Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull. Behind many fads are Instagram influencers with perceived authority on health and wellness—the majority of whom have no real nutritional training or expertise."

How You Can Help Fight the Information Wars: Silicon Valley won’t save us. We’re on our own.; The New York Times, December 18, 2018

Kara Swisher, The New York Times;

How You Can Help Fight the Information Wars:

Silicon Valley won’t save us. We’re on our own.

[Kip Currier: A rallying cry to all persons passionate about and/or working on issues related to information literacy and evaluating information...]

"For now, it’s not clear what we can do, except take control of our own individual news consumption. Back in July, in fact, Ms. DiResta advised consumer restraint as the first line of defense, especially when encountering information that any passably intelligent person could guess might have been placed by a group seeking to manufacture discord.

“They’re preying on your confirmation bias,” she said. “When content is being pushed to you, that’s something that you want to see. So, take the extra second to do the fact-check, even if it confirms your worst impulses about something you absolutely hate — before you hit the retweet button, before you hit the share button, just take the extra second.”

If we really are on our own in this age of information warfare, as the Senate reports suggest, there’s only one rule that can help us win it: See something, say nothing."

Fake News and the Internet Shell Game; New York Times, 11/28/16

Michael P. Lynch, New York Times; Fake News and the Internet Shell Game:

"Almost everything that we encounter online is being presented to us by for-profit algorithms, and by us, post by post, tweet by tweet. That fact, even more than the spread of fake news, can be its own sort of shell game, one that we are pulling on ourselves.

As the late-19th-century mathematician W. K. Clifford noted in his famous essay, “The Ethics of Belief,” ambivalence about objective evidence is an attitude corrosive of democracy. Clifford ends the essay by imagining someone who has “no time for the long course of study” that would make him competent to judge many questions. Clifford’s response is withering: “Then he should have no time to believe.”

And we might add, tweet."

Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds; NPR, 11/23/16

Camila Domonoske, NPR; Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds:

"Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information.

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles...

The solution, they write, is to teach students — or, really, all Internet users — to read like fact checkers.

That means not just reading "vertically," on a single page or source, but looking for other sources — as well as not taking "About" pages as evidence of neutrality, and not assuming Google ranks results by reliability.

"The kinds of duties that used to be the responsibility of editors, of librarians now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses a screen to become informed about the world," Wineburg told NPR. "And so the response is not to take away these rights from ordinary citizens but to teach them how to thoughtfully engage in information seeking and evaluating in a cacophonous democracy.""

In the war on fake news, school librarians have a huge role to play; The Verge, 11/16/16

Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Verge; In the war on fake news, school librarians have a huge role to play:

"On top of Facebook’s issues, the first Google search result for election results for several hours on Monday was a tiny conspiracy blog that wrongly showed Trump winning the popular vote. Google and Facebook both announced on Monday that they would block fake news sources from using their ad networks (one of the key ways that small to moderately sized websites make money), but the issue of fake news creeping up in search results and news feeds is still an urgent one.

All of this is compounded by the reality that a lot of people don’t know fake news when they see it, sensationalized reports are more likely to go viral on social media than sane ones, and distrust of traditional (and genuinely more reliable) media sources is rising.

To get a better idea of how we can fight misinformation, The Verge talked to Professor Nicole A. Cooke of the University of Illinois. Professor Cooke works in the University’s top-ranked School of Information Sciences, focusing on human information behavior, information literacy, and diversity in librarianship. We discussed why it seems to be getting harder and harder for people to keep track of the truth, what libraries are doing to help them, and what we all need to do going forward."