The Heads of TikTok's Hydra Have Already Spawned (Regardless of What Happens to TikTok)

Once again, banning the app does not solve all our problems.

This time two years ago, a TikTok ban was looming in the States.

Two years later, on this coming Sunday, it looks like that may finally happen.

Or it may not. President-Elect Trump has signaled a possibility of swooping in and saving the platform somehow. Whether he will actually do that remains to be seen. Both Elon Musk and Mr.Beast have expressed interest in buying the platform, despite ByteDance’s refusal to sell. But even though the Supreme Court’s decision to not block the law forcing the sale of TikTok or banning the platform is a welcomed decision (and a rare example of #CongressDoYourJob), I need to be the bearer of bad news and say that what happens to TikTok the platform is irrelevant at this point, because the heads of TikTok’s hydra have already spawned and are here to stay.

I’ll reiterate what I wrote on this topic the last time it was in the news:

There is a sense of hope that “if this platform can just get banned or blocked, it will slow the corrosive effects of this digital fentanyl on our society and our younger generations”. This piece is going to throw a wet blanket on that implicit optimism: even if TikTok the platform gets banned, TikTok as short-form video and as a cultural force is here to stay. Even if the Chinese Communist Party gets the boot (as it should), numerous other problems remain as two other heads of short form video - YouTube and Instagram¹ - take its place.

Suffice to say, in the two years since I wrote that paragraph, both YouTube and Instagram have made significant gains in implementing short form video. Even if TikTok survives this, both have become legitimate competitors to TikTok’s once-held dominance. But it’s not just YouTube and Instagram that have spawned as TikTok hydra heads. Meta as a whole has integrated short form video successfully into Facebook, and provided synergy between two different platforms in a way TikTok can’t compete with. Even LinkedIn recently rolled out a short form video feed for its creators. Short form video is everywhere, and it is here to stay.

Again, from two years ago:

Taken together, when we talk about “banning TikTok”, it ought to be clear that even if the platform TikTok is banned, TikTok as a type of content and as a new cultural force is not going anywhere.

If TikTok the platform were to get banned, it immediately raises the question: where does all this gargantuan amount of creative energy and consumptive focus go? That supply and demand has to be picked up somewhere. The 80 minutes that people spend on TikTok per day (on average) will not just reduce to 0 minutes just because the platform is inaccessible; it will just get spent elsewhere, and right now, that “elsewhere” will almost certainly be YouTube and Instagram.

That distribution of creative energy has already happened. I see it from the perch I sit on for my job. That creative energy is also growing. There is more short form video content being made today than there was two years ago, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Again, from two years ago:

In short: if you’re concerned about the negative mental and spiritual effects of TikTok and its content (as I think you should), the battle is not won just because TikTok the platform gets blocked. The problems created by TikTok now transcend the platform itself and will continue onward even if the platform itself is gone.

Or even if the platform stays. I am writing this on a whim after hearing news of the Court’s verdict. This story is likely far from over with twists and turns that remain to be seen. My point is that, from a media ecology standpoint, what happens to TikTok at this point will largely be irrelevant. I am not saying there are some unique dangers to TikTok. It’s algorithm is hands-down the most effective and powerful social media algorithm to date, as is its ability to be uniquely destructive to those who use it. I love the thought of giving the Chinese Community Party the figurative boot. But just like the chapter in this saga is also far from over, short form video’s presence in social media is far from over too.

But regardless of what happens, this doesn’t change:

The need for media literacy education will remain as paramount as ever, as will the need for brave influencer-evangelists to descend into hell to be salt and light amid an incredible darkness - whether that darkness lives on TikTok itself or one of the heads it spawns after its demise.

God has called some of us to participate in Digital Babylon whether we want to or not, yet we are not sent there alone. As with preaching, teaching, and evangelism, we plant and water, but it is God who gives the growth. If our confidence in our work is tied to our preferred forms of media ecology, but not in the Spirit as the true source that gives our words power in those ecosystems, we can and should despair that social media grows more powerful.

But the Spirit is the Lord, even over the algorithms of man. We can and should rejoice that an incredibly destructive and harmful social media platform is being defeated, but the Lord’s purposes will not be thwarted no matter how powerful Digital Babylon continues to become.

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Thanks for reading. Happy 2025! I hope your year has started off strong and that you haven’t fallen off from your New Years resolutions (or that a certain blizzard hasn’t given you a false start in getting your resolutions off the ground).

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- Austin