THEY HAD PLENTY OF HELP FROM ACADEMIA, BUT YEAH: TikTok made Gen Z pro-Palestine.

I’m a student in one of Britain’s largest high schools and know no one who supports Israel over Palestine. Some readers might find that shocking. Consider, though, how my generation gets its news. TikTok is today by far the preferred source of news for teenagers; YouTube is next, Instagram third. Studies show the average teen spends two hours every day glued to their screens. Few my age buy or read a newspaper, or would ever think of doing so. Even the idea of sitting down to watch TV news seems alien to us. We view the world through smartphones; we understand current affairs through video snippets.

In theory, the videos TikTok shows you relate to what you have previously watched: if the algorithm sees that you like something, it gives you more. It’s designed to be addictive. One survey found that just over half of teenagers who go on TikTok use it for news. There are almost no checks and balances to make sure that what TikTokkers see is fair, balanced or accurate.

I have come across many videos about the war on my TikTok “for you” page and I can confidently say that I’ve only seen pro-Palestinian ones. If such material were all assembled in a newspaper or a TV channel, it would look like pretty hardcore propaganda.

CTRL-F “China” or “CCP,” brings back zero results, even though: TikTok May Be A Chinese Superweapon.