Douyin Is Spinach. TikTok Is Opium.

“TikTok could take the place of sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes.” [1]

— TikTok executive, internal company communication, obtained by NPR and Kentucky Public Radio, October 2024

This is a TikTok executive writing inside the company. These are the kinds of conversations happening behind closed doors. They want their product to replace the most basic parts of being human. Sleep, food, and eye contact with the people you love.

Reading that should make us angry. Because that is exactly what these companies are designing their products to become.

They want to replace everything in your life for one simple thing. Profits.

260 Videos. 35 Minutes. Addicted.

TikTok does not just happen to be addictive, it was engineered to be.

The algorithm has one objective and that is to keep you watching for as long as possible. The videos are short by design. The shorter the video the faster the loop. The faster the loop the harder it is to stop. Before you realize what you thought would be a quick couple swipes turns into hundreds which suddenly keeps you on the app for an hour of your time.

TikTok did not stumble onto this formula they specifically calculated it. Their own internal research determined the precise number of videos it takes for someone to form a habit. 260 videos. And since TikTok videos can be as short as eight seconds their own investigators concluded that in under 35 minutes an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform. [1]

The result speaks for itself. The average person spends 95 minutes per day on TikTok. More than any other social media platform available. More than Instagram. More than X. More than YouTube. [2] That is the product working exactly how it was designed.

A Clerical Error In Kentucky

When 14 state attorneys general sued TikTok in October 2024 after a two year investigation the company did what companies do when they are caught. They asked for the most damaging material to be blacked out from public view. There must have been a glitch, because it didn’t work.

A reporter at Kentucky Public Radio discovered that copying and pasting the blacked out text into a separate document revealed everything TikTok had tried to keep secret. NPR went through every single redaction. What they found was a company that knew exactly what it was doing to teenagers and appeared completely unconcerned. [1] Here is what was hiding behind those black bars.

TikTok built a 60 minute screen time limit and marketed it to parents as a safety feature. A tool designed to protect children from spending too much time on the app. TikTok measured the success of this tool not by how much it actually reduced screen time but by how much it improved public trust. The real reduction in daily screen time was one and a half minutes. From 108.5 minutes per day to 107. [1]

They built a fake safety feature, advertised it to parents, and called it a win. But wait, there’s more.

When TikTok noticed a high volume of what their own documents called not attractive subjects filling the feed they quietly retooled the algorithm to amplify users the company considered beautiful. They did not just passively let attractive users rise to the top. They actively suppressed everyone they deemed unattractive. [1]

Their own documents show they knew exactly what this was doing. TikTok’s beauty filters allow users to overlay artificial intelligence onto their faces to appear thinner, younger, with bigger eyes and fuller lips. Internally employees suggested the company add educational resources about image disorders and create awareness campaigns about the dangers of beauty filters and low self esteem. They suggested adding a banner warning about the importance of positive body image. [1]

None of that ever happened. Instead TikTok pushed the beauty filters harder to keep engagement up. Teenagers are scrolling through a feed that was deliberately engineered to show them a narrow and unattainable beauty standard while simultaneously hiding everyone who does not meet it.

And then there is the part that is hardest to read. Kids as young as 15 were stripping on TikTok live for paying adults. TikTok discovered this through an internal investigation triggered by a Forbes report. What they found was a high number of underage streamers receiving digital gifts in exchange for stripping. The gifts appeared as virtual items like plush toys and flowers but represented real money paid by adults to watch children remove their clothing. [1] [3]

An internal document about users under 13 instructed TikTok moderators not to take action on reports of underage users unless their bio specifically stated they were 13 or younger. Under federal law social media companies cannot collect data on children under 13 without explicit parental consent. TikTok’s own internal policy was designed to look the other way. [1] [3]

Spinach For Them. Opium For Us.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance operates two versions of the same app. In China it is called Douyin. Same company, same technology, but a completely different experience for children.

In China children under 14 get a 40 minute daily limit. The content they see is educational like science experiments, museum tours, language lessons, and cooking.

In the United States teenagers get the same version as adults. There are no time limits, no educational filter, just the infinite scroll that their own research says creates addiction in under 35 minutes.

Tristan Harris a former Google engineer and one of the most prominent voices on social media ethics put it best in an interview on CBS 60 Minutes.

“It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world.” [4]

ByteDance has already proven they know how to build a version of this app that does not hook children. The choice to offer something different here has simply never been made. There are downstream consequences because of it.

What It Is Doing To An Entire Generation

A systematic review and meta analysis published in 2025 examined 16 studies covering 15,821 people. Every single study found a statistically significant association between TikTok use and depression. [5]

And it is not just depression. The lawsuits allege TikTok knew its beauty filters increased the risk of body image issues, anxiety, and eating disorders among young users. They pushed those filters to their youngest users anyway. The District of Columbia’s lawsuit found that TikTok traps teenagers in algorithmic bubbles bombarding them with videos about weight loss, body image, and self harm. The exact content TikTok publicly claims not to allow on its platform. [6]

Then there are the challenges. A 15 year old boy died in Manhattan from subway surfing. His mom found TikTok videos about subway surfing in his account after he was gone. He wasn’t the only one. The lawsuits cite multiple cases of teenagers injuring or killing themselves participating in viral TikTok challenges. [6]

Research from Weill Cornell Medical College found that 10 to 14 year olds heavily addicted to social media face two to three times the risk of suicidal behavior. [7]

When 14 States Say Enough

In October 2024 a bipartisan coalition of 14 state attorneys general sued TikTok after a two year investigation into the company. Republicans and Democrats agree on almost nothing right now yet they agree on this. [6]

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said it directly. TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content. He went even further. TikTok chose addiction and more use and more eyeballs and more mental and physical harm for young people in order to get profits. [6]

In May 2025 New York Attorney General Letitia James won a court victory after TikTok tried to have the lawsuit dismissed. The case is moving forward. [8]

A bipartisan pair of United States Senators wrote directly to TikTok demanding all documents related to child safety be turned over. The request came after NPR published its reporting on the Kentucky redactions. [9]

TikTok responded to all of it the same way. They called the reporting irresponsible and the documents taken out of context. Anything to cover themselves.

Put Down The Slot Machine

A slot machine works by delivering unpredictable rewards at unpredictable intervals. You do not know when you are going to win so you keep pulling the lever. Researchers who study behavioral addiction call this a variable reward mechanism and it is one of the most powerful psychological forces known to produce compulsive behavior.

TikTok’s For You page works the same way. You do not know what the next video is going to be. It might be funny. It might be fascinating. It might make you feel something. You do not know until you swipe. So you keep swiping. Researchers studying TikTok’s algorithm have specifically described it as employing a variable reward mechanism akin to a slot machine that leads to compulsive use. [10]

Again, the average user spends 95 minutes a day. That is over 23 days a year of your life gone pulling a lever chasing a fictional reward.

Deleting the app is deciding to walk away from the machine.

See you out there at disconnectd.com.

How To Delete Your TikTok Account

Before you delete make sure to download your data first. Go to your profile then tap the three line menu in the top right corner. Select Settings and Privacy then Privacy then Download Your Data. TikTok will notify you when your file is ready to download.

To delete on mobile: Open TikTok and go to your profile. Tap the three line menu in the top right corner. Select Settings and Privacy then Manage Account then Delete Account. Follow the prompts and confirm with your password.

To delete on desktop: Go to tiktok.com and log in. Click your profile icon then Settings. Click Manage Account then Delete Account. Follow the prompts and confirm.

The 30 day grace period: After confirming deletion TikTok gives you 30 days before the account is permanently deleted. If you log back in during that period the deletion is cancelled. After 30 days everything is gone permanently.

It’s time for the slot machine to go quiet and reclaim your life.

Sources

[1] Allyn, Bobby and Goodman, Sylvia. “TikTok executives know about app’s effect on teens, lawsuit documents allege.” NPR and Kentucky Public Radio. October 11, 2024. npr.org

[2] TikTok User Statistics 2026. Backlinko. backlinko.com

[3] Allyn, Bobby. “Inside the TikTok documents: Stripping teens and boosting attractive people.” NPR. October 12, 2024. npr.org

[4] Harris, Tristan. Interview on CBS 60 Minutes. Reported in Deseret News. November 2022. deseret.com

[5] Grammatikopoulou et al. “Association between problematic TikTok use and mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis.” PMC. 2025. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[6] Attorney General James Sues TikTok for Harming Children’s Mental Health. New York Attorney General Press Release. October 2024. ag.ny.gov

[7] TikTok Addiction Lawsuits for Child and Teen Harm. Gibbs Mura Law Group. Citing Weill Cornell Medical College study, 2025. classlawgroup.com

[8] Attorney General James Wins Court Victory Against TikTok. New York Attorney General Press Release. May 2025. ag.ny.gov

[9] Senators call on TikTok to produce documents in response to NPR report. NPR. October 12, 2024. npr.org

[10] TikTok Algorithm 2026: How the FYP Really Works. Beatstorapon. Citing Global TikTok For You Feed research on variable reward mechanisms. beatstorapon.com