(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)
Politicians of both parties are embracing the use of social media to get out political messages, including dominant newcomer short-video platform TikTok. As more and more young Americans rely on social media to pick up the news in our evolving communications world, the media elites are losing power on how to control the narrative on current events.
That is a good thing.
Former President Donald J. Trump has taken a lead role in adopting TikTok to communicate to younger voters. The youth vote is dominant on TikTok, and former President Trump’s embrace of the social media app will help him with the very voters that may put him over the top in the 2024 presidential election.
Voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will play a central role in who controls the White House and a handful of younger voters may tip the scale for Trump if he is successful on the app.
Indeed, TikTok itself is a more valuable for sharing political content than some legacy social media companies. According to a Pew Research poll, 36% of TikTok users say they use it to stay up on politics compared to just 26% for Facebook and Instagram. X/Twitter still dominates at 59%, which is why the platform took such a hit when it foolishly kicked President Trump off the platform three years ago.
And Democrats themselves – desperate for any advantage after four years of Biden’s unhideable senility – have not abandoned TikTok. When you have both President Joe Biden, now replaced by TikTok favorite Vice President Kamala Harris, and Trump incorporating a social media platform into their presidential campaigns, it shows that’s where the conversation is being had.
It makes no sense to voters that some call for a ban while using the app like President Biden. Young voters may punish the Biden administration at the ballot box for speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue.
And banning TikTok won’t help win over any young voters, as they have flocked to the Tok the way Millennials did to Facebook 20 years ago. According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, 55% of 18- to 29-year-olds use TikTok, including 28% who do so often.
(As with most new technologies, use of the platform declines with age to only 14% of those 65 and older on TikTok.) Accordingly, just 39% of adults younger than 30 favor a ban. This could be yet another instance where Democrats trying to have their “we’re young and hip!” cake and eat it too.
In terms of Republicans’ cake-having and eating polemics, there could also be a First Amendment issue here as well, as others have pointed out. We can’t oppose social media companies banning people they don’t like, then turn around and say we want to ban social media companies we don’t like.
In a rare instance of journalism, CNN in March took a poke at the members of Congress who both voted to ban TikTok and actively use it, namely highlighting Democratic Reps. Colin Allred (Tex.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) as they leverage each campaign in their Senate races this year.
CNN quoted Schiff saying, “The Chinese Communist Party’s ability to exploit private user data and to manipulate public opinion through TikTok present serious national security concerns. For that reason, I believe that divestiture presents the best option to preserve access to the platform, while ameliorating these risks.”
The CCP has also had spies working embedded with his colleagues in the California Congressional delegation – Diane Feinstein’s driver, Eric Swalwell’s fundraiser, whoever else we don’t know about – but Schiff seems fine with all that!
If TikTok is the new communications battlefield of the 2024 election, Trump seems like the general to win it. The most popular video on social in the last year has been Trump surviving an assassin’s bullet by the grace of God, and pausing to cheer his supporters on.
Meanwhile videos of VP Kamala Harris struggling with basic syntax. One imagines Republicans will win the TikTok arms race.