Does this count as a moral panic?
All the examples you gave involved sorting kids into good and bad categories. There were good kids who were victims caught up. And there were bad kids, who the good kids needed to be warned to stay away from.
So far as I know, no one has yet said that any kids who use TikTok need to be separated from any other kids. And I don't remember that happening with Facebook or MySpace before them. Everything earlier is before my time.
You forgot the evils of pinball and comic books.
Seems like you must not have kids in this age range.
Are you implying TV is harmless? It mollifies and brainwashes people to a saddening degree; even though it can be hard to differentiate symptom from cause, here.
Equating TikTok to Rock 'n Roll, TV, Video Games, and Heavy Metal is a bit reductionist don't you think?
Numerous studies have been done on the effect of "dopamine hijacking" that is common to platforms like TikTok. The effect this has had on children's attention span has been measured. In particular CocoMelon has been at the forefront of this. Colloquially this has been called "brainrot". The pacing, colors, frame timing, etc are all studied in a lab to achieve maximum engagement. This isn't necessarily a problem for content designed for adults. Ostensibly, adults can make a choice whether or not to consume addictive entertainment. However, for children this type of material is sold as educational. There's a direct line from attention span to screen time that is suspected to be the reason for poor performance in Gen Alpha.
However, anyone, child or adult, that has spent time on these platforms has found themselves locked into a doom-scrolling loop.
This is all so well known at this point it's common knowledge. The only people shilling for this content to be unmoderated work for these companies themselves.
If we are to say TikTok is a moral panic than we should also say cigarettes are a moral panic. After-all, all you "have to do" is stop smoking. No harder than stopping scrolling. I would challenge you to sit through CoCoMelon or "gagagadee Chicken Nugget" and determine if it's a moral panic or a crisis originating from terrible parenting. Hell, just click over to Youtube Kids and leave it playing for a while. It will quickly diverge into brightly color, precisely measured, loud, fast paced, and nonsensical videos labeled as "educational".
> All the while these people never seem to get too concerned that a significant percentage of American children only get fed at school by the school, don't receive proper medical care and have very little wherewithal to get an education beyond high school
FWIW this is a classic misdirection. I care simultaneously about these things. But the lowest hanging fruit that I personally can understand is preventing our kids from watching the social media equivalent of a gallon of ice cream. There wouldn't be a "moral panic" if kids were binge watching full length episodes of Nova and National Geographic.