A French neurologist warned communist China is using the hugely popular social media app TikTok to destroy the lives of millions of Western children while restricting its own children’s usage to benefit their academic development.
Neurologist and author Michel Desmurget said the app is destroying the academic potential of Western children.
“You can already see a significant difference between OECD countries and Asian countries. When China joined the Pisa program in 2009, which tests children’s abilities, it was a real electric shock for the West,” he told the German publication Die Welt.
“Even Barack Obama spoke of a Sputnik effect, referring to the trauma Americans experienced when the Russians sent the first satellite into space before they did. That’s exactly what then drove the United States to create NASA and launch massive space programs.”
According to Desmurget, shocking evidence shows children in the West suffer dramatic intellectual impairment due to the amount of time spent on social media apps like TikTok.
“The impact on language skills is staggering. And there are also direct consequences, for example, on the ability to concentrate, since these networks represent a permanent sensory load,” Desmurget said.
“At the same time, they are gigantic platforms that create social norms and put terrible pressure on young people,” he added,
“The platforms play with such mechanisms and use them to control us. In addition, the networks make us allow ourselves to be distracted; they are the purest machines for structuring distractions in our brain. And then you boast that today’s youth react faster and more strongly to events around them, without realizing that this means the end of real attention,” he warned.
China Using TikTok to Destroy the West
Desmurget said China is actively controlling the usage of such apps to protect their own children, which could have enormous implications for the future, including the geopolitical consequences due to China deliberately weakening the West’s economic and intellectual capacity.
“Social media is largely responsible for this (disparity in Pisa test results), at a time when China is rigorously controlling their use,” Desmurget said.
“The Chinese government limits the use of TikTok, which operates under the name Douyin there, to 40 minutes per day, and the time for video games for teenagers has also been drastically reduced,’ he continued.
“Our European children, on the other hand, sit in front of screens for seven to eight hours a day. The TikTok version that we know here in the West has no restrictions whatsoever, either in terms of content or time of use.”
Desmurget went on to warn about the sinister elements of the app.
“We are constantly presented with the positive aspects of these networks, but compared to the damage they cause, they are just a small drop of water in the ocean. Tobacco, for example, has the positive effect of losing weight, but nobody is stupid enough to recommend it,” he said.
China has made it no secret that they restrict their children’s screen time.
“A Chinese officer was asked why they were limiting the time spent on video games and social media — they risked neglecting the technology sector. He simply said: ‘Children are the future of our nation’,” said the French neurologist.
China had actively marketed TIkTok to children and teens in the West, which came when youngsters were already softened for addiction by other apps like Facebook and Instagram.
When asked whether they should place restrictions on the likes of TikTok, Desmurget said, “I don’t know whether France should also introduce such measures, I’ve never actually been in favor of coercive measures.”
“But we should first put an end to this kind of lobbyist drum fire, this massive misinformation on these issues that people are constantly inundated with, trying to make them believe that children are made much more intelligent through video games and social networks and that they achieve better cognitive performance, and this despite the fact that all studies prove the opposite,” he added.
Desmurget, the author of “Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children,” a book documenting the hazards of excessive screen time with children, gave a grim outlook for the West if restrictions aren’t put in place.
“All forms of recreational digital consumption – whether on smartphones, tablets, game consoles or TVs – have skyrocketed in the younger generations. From the age of two, children in the West clock up more than 2.5 hours of screen time a day; by the time they reach 13, it’s more than seven hours a day. Added up over the first 18 years of life, this is the equivalent of almost 30 school years, or 15 years of full-time employment,” he said.
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