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A Global Message to TikTok: Stop Your Profit Model of 'Toxic and Addictive' Content for Kids
"TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
Nov 25, 2025
A group of digital activists is set to deliver a message to social media giant TikTok on Tuesday to clean up its "toxic and addictive" business model.
The petition, which has more than 170,000 signatures and is being circulated by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, will be delivered to TikTok's office in Dublin, Ireland by activists Mary Kate Harten and Trinity Kendi of Ireland; Abril Perazzini of Argentina; and Noe Hamon of France.
In the petition, Amnesty accuses TikTok of becoming "a space that is more and more toxic and addictive," and can potentially harm the "self-image, mental health, well-being of younger users."
Amnesty International campaigner Zahra Asif Razvi said that the petition is demanding that TikTok completely redo its business model to be built around user safety.
"These signatures represent a global demand for TikTok to replace its current business model of an app that is addictive by design with one that is safe by design," she said. "TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
The human rights group says that its own research released last month shows that TikTok prioritizes user engagement over safety, and will often send young users to videos featuring "depression, self-harm and suicide content" on its platform.
Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty International's researcher on children and young people's digital rights, explained that teen users who express interest in content related to mental health can be pulled into "toxic rabbit holes" that glorify self-harm.
"Within just three to four hours of engaging with TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, teenage test accounts were exposed to videos that romanticized suicide or showed young people expressing intentions to end their lives, including information on suicide methods," she explained. "The testimonies of young people and bereaved parents in France reveal how TikTok normalized and exacerbated self-harm and suicidal ideation up to the point of recommending content on 'suicide challenges.'"
Amnesty's petition comes one week after the American Psychological Association (APA) published research that accumulated data collected in more than 70 other studies and found that excessive use of short-form video apps such as TikTok and Instagram "is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults."
The research's findings were particularly troublesome concerning the impacts on young people's cognitive development, as they found that "repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning."
The APA's study found that having the ability to swipe away from videos that don't offer instant gratification "could support a pattern of rapid disengagement from stimuli that do not provide immediate novelty or excitement," and thus "may diminish attentional control and reduce the capacity for sustained cognitive engagement, as cognitive processing becomes increasingly oriented toward brief, high-reward interactions rather than extended, goal-directed tasks."
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'Something Is Really Working': New Numbers Show Massive Reach of Mamdani's Campaign
"There are huge lessons here about how to appeal to a broad audience, not just immediate followers," said the founder of a global consulting firm of the Mamdani campaign's viral video success.
Jul 28, 2025
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has made waves for putting out videos during his campaign that have gone viral on social media, and The New Republic's Greg Sargent on Monday got a peak at exactly how many viewers these videos are reaching.
Citing internal data from the Mamdani campaign, Sargent reported that the recent video of Mamdani announcing his vacation in Uganda that also ridiculed right-wing New York tabloids racked up 4.5 million views on the social media platform Instagram, and more than half of those views came from users who were not already followers of the campaign's account.
While that video was a particularly successful example of Mamdani's campaign videos, others got similarly impressive numbers of views, such as a video of him dissecting the problems with sluggish traffic in Manhattan that got 2.5 million views on Instagram and a video of him getting endorsed by Haitian-American New York Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn that got 1.6 million views on the platform.
And the success of these videos isn't just relegated to one platform, as Techdirt journalist Mike Masnick told Sargent that 10 of Mamdani's recent videos have scored a million views or more on TikTok.
"To consistently pull really high numbers, even with wonky material, shows something is really working," Masnick explained to Sargent. "People spend a lot of time on short-form video apps looking to be entertained by real people. He's been able to produce political content that meets that need."
Sargent also says that both the tone of the videos—which he describes as being of a "cheerful populism" bent—and their substance have proven to be a winning formula.
"Much of Mamdani's messaging is about fixing the government so it makes people's daily lives more livable," wrote Sargent. "The positive vibe that New Yorkers are fortunate to live in such a great city—and that it can be made even more awesome—suffuses everything."
Danielle Butterfield, executive director of super PAC Priorities USA, told Sargent that the secret of the videos' success has been simple because it just involves "letting him speak authentically to what he believes."
Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, a political activist and the founder of executive coaching and consulting firm The Gaia Project, recommended Sargent's reporting on Mamdani's campaign and said it offered lessons more Democrats could take to heart.
"This... needs to be read by anyone in campaign work," she wrote on Bluesky. "There are huge lessons here about how to appeal to a broad audience, not just immediate followers. Also lines up with everything I wrote this morning about the need for positive, hopeful vision right now that appeals to the masses."
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Nonprofits and Advocates Can’t Rely on Social Media Giants. Here’s How They Can Adjust.
Given all the upheaval in today’s landscape, organizations must ensure they can reach their audiences in a multitude of ways, without relying on a single platform.
May 04, 2025
Nonprofits and advocacy groups are in the midst of a mounting crisis: Social media giants are growing more chaotic, untrustworthy, and dangerous.
Just consider what’s happened in the past few weeks. Without warning, explanation, or human review, Meta suspended the Instagram account of Presbyterian Outlook—a progressive, well-established news outlet for the Presbyterian Church. The outlet noted that it had thoughtfully invested in the platform to expand its reach, but would not return given the possibility of another abrupt cancellation.
Then, weeks later, X—which has been plagued by reports of increasing misinformation and amplifying far-right accounts—was hit with cybersecurity attacks that downed the platform.
Just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement.
And Meta recently announced that it would draw from X’s technology to employ “Community Notes” on its platforms—which are purportedly meant to fill in the gaps left after the company fired its fact-checking team. Experts have warned that such a system could easily be exploited by groups motivated by their own interests.
These events are just the latest in a growing pile of evidence that organizations and advocates can’t count on social media giants like they once did. They’re fueling misinformation, inflammatory perspectives, and partisan divisions—all in the name of profits.
To continue to be effective in our increasingly digital world, organizations will need to adjust to this new landscape.
Unquestionably, charting the path forward is challenging. Many organizations and advocates have spent years investing in and building profiles on established media platforms. These groups depend on this technology to share their messaging, organize, provide educational tools, fundraise, and more. It’s difficult to shift all these resources.
Other organizations have yet to build up a robust digital presence, but don’t know where to begin, especially in today’s chaotic climate.
Wherever nonprofits and advocates fall on this spectrum, they can and should invest in technology. Here’s how they can be most effective.
First, organizations must recognize that—just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement. Given all the upheaval in today’s landscape, organizations must ensure they can reach their audiences in a multitude of ways, without relying on a single platform.
As such, they should build out opportunities for subscription-based data creation. That means reinvesting in collecting more traditional contact methods—like emails and phone numbers. It also means investing in technologies that allow them to share their messages without censorship from outside sources. Blogs and newsletter platforms can be powerful tools to communicate with audiences and provide rich discourse free from external interference.
Protected digital communities—which are only open to certain groups or are invitation-based—can also help strengthen connections between an organization’s supporters. We’re starting to employ this strategy at the Technology, Innovation, and Digital Engagement Lab (TIDEL), which is housed at Union Theological Seminary. Right now, we’re working with a cohort of faith and social justice leaders to deploy new technology to advance their missions.
We’ve recommended a platform called Mighty Networks, which uses AI to help creators build and manage online communities. Two of our fellows are using this service to support Black clergywomen through education and practical application, focusing on mental health awareness and balance. Another pair of fellows is aiming to use the platform to deliver digitally-based educational programming and sustain a community of care professionals committed to improving access to spiritually integrated, trauma-informed care.
Make no mistake: Nonprofits and advocacy organizations need a digital presence to be effective. But they’ll have to adjust to shield themselves from the chaos and malice of social media giants.
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