It’s somewhat hard to believe, but notorious lefty social media drone Chrissy Teigen may have had the best reaction to the brief (but welcome) TikTok shutdown this week.
As you’ve no doubt heard if you have a phone-addicted Gen Alpha kid, the Chinese video-sharing service/CCP data leech was down for 12 hours on Sunday. It was initially taken offline after a bill banning the service took effect in the United States, but came back up after President-to-be Donald Trump promised to restore access.
“Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” a notification alerting users to the service being back read, according to CNN.
There were plenty of takes on this — some good, some bad, some weird:
Taylor Lorenz’s reaction to the TikTok ban is very normal and healthy pic.twitter.com/ZcWBY2hOCF
— Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns) January 14, 2025
Tiktokers are having melt downs. The app will be banned in 24 hours 😢 IT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED FROM THE APP STORE 😭😭
— nuvyb💀🇯🇲 (@Nu_Vyb) January 19, 2025
TikTok influencer has a breakdown on live after seeing the app officially get banned in U.S 😳 pic.twitter.com/4kLntbldoA
— soseriuzradio (@soseriuzradio) January 19, 2025
Should parent keep their kids off of TikTok?
Yes: 100% (2 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
Even if those kids are faking it, I’m pretty sure they’ve been possessed by a demon.
I guess it’s not difficult to seem calm and rational vis-à-vis that kind of hyperventilating fatuity, but Teigen, surprisingly, came across as the most normal person to opine about this.
Posting on her Instagram story Sunday, the 39-year-old model and influencer said that life without social media is — gasp! — normal and that people ought to limit their access to it.
“I personally think that one day there will be the most incredible rule, my first rule would be — I think the government or some kind of ethics committee, somebody, should shut off social media between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.,” she said in the video, according to the New York Post.
“Leave it all up. Everyone gets to do anything they want but only between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Shut it off. Done.”
And, as she noted as a millennial, this didn’t used to be this way.
“I come from the days where we had nothing and then we saw something. Guys, life was great. Life was awesome before this,” she said.
“I know it’s hard to see it now, but it’s doable. It’s very doable,” Teigen added.
“This doesn’t have to be our lives. And I say this for myself as well because, obviously, I’m on here right now doing this! But it doesn’t have to define us or be our whole lives.”
It’s worth noting that Teigen is pretty much the poster model for the downside of social media, having been raked over the coals (not without reason, mind you) in 2021 for a scandal involving her past cyberbullying of figures from Melania Trump to Mariah Carey to Lindsay Lohan to Tamera Mowry to Sarah Palin. She even told a 16-year-old Courtney Stodden to commit suicide.
Yes, that’s some pretty striking ugliness, but one can’t say that Teigen is unacquainted with the dark side of social media — and knows how to fight it: by not allowing everyone free reign over it. Turn off at some point.
The one thing that can be disputed in her statement is that “the government or some kind of ethics committee” should shut social media off. The government ought to have little to do with it, aside from intervening when the CCP is using it as an instrument to sponge data, allegedly, but that’s it. Not only is government interference unwarranted, but remember Milton Friedman’s famous axiom: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” Put government in charge of an ethics committee that dictates social media and I’m pretty sure that in five years, they’d find a way to change the national motto from “E pluribus unum” to “Don’t yuck my yum.”
As for “some kind of ethics committee,” that’s either defined as a) parents or b) the voice of reason inside your head if you’re of the age of majority.
If your children are too young to hear that voice of reason, guess what? You are that voice of reason. It’s your job to gatekeep your child’s internet access in all cases, and not just as it relates to pornography or violent games. Social media also needs checking.
However, it’s kind of surprising to see the sanest take from the whole TikTok ban coming from a woman who has heretofore presented herself as one of the least sane humans on social media. For once, her words deserve heeding.
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