Maher: China Gave Us TikTok, the App that ‘Rots our Children’s Brains’

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that China gave us the app “that rots our children’s brains” with TikTok and it seems like we’re experimenting on the brains of young people.

Maher said, “[W]e do seem to be doing [an] experiment on young people’s brains.”

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen responded, “So, right now, there’s no incentive for TikTok to help you go to bed, right? … Every additional video you watch…they make more money the longer they keep you on there, which is why, in China, there [are] actually rate limits on how much children can use it per day, like only 40 minutes per day.”

Maher then said, “And yet it is a Chinese app. So they give us the one that rots our children’s brains, is that right?”

Haugen responded, “So, they do nothing when the average child in the United States uses it for, on average, 100 minutes a day. And every year, that number has been going up by an order of seven to ten minutes. And so, there’s this question of what’s going on where China says, this is too dangerous for our own children to use, but it’s fine if American children use it?”

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