Now top politicians are also on TikTok. Anyone who uses this platform could become a gravedigger of our democracy, warns neuroscientist and best-selling author Henning Beck. He analyzed the accounts of the top candidates in the European election campaign.
After all: He won’t dance. Olaf Scholz promised that much when he dared to appear on TikTok. This puts him in good company: other top politicians are also venturing into social media territory. Karl Lauterbach for example. Or Sahra Wagenknecht.
Of course, they all pale behind the AfD, which has twice as much reach as all other parties combined. Olaf Scholz’s first viral TikTok video, in which he chats about his briefcase, doesn’t change that.
Being present on TikTok suddenly doesn’t seem like a fashionable zeitgeist, but rather like a political necessity. Didn’t the current trend study “Youth in Germany” show that social media is the main source of news for young people? You can’t afford not to be there. Because politics has to be brought to the people if you don’t want to lose them.
But social media (and TikTok in particular) creates two inherent problems by its design. First: increasing simplification of content undermines its substance. Facebook was a text medium, Instagram focused on images, and since TikTok, the focus has been on short videos.
Henning Beck, born in 1983, studied biochemistry in Tübingen and received his doctorate in neuroscience. He worked at the University of California in Berkeley and publishes regularly in WiWo and Deutschlandfunk Nova, among others. He gives lectures on topics such as brain research and creativity. He most recently published the SPIEGEL bestseller “12 Laws of Stupidity. Mistakes in thinking that prevent sensible decisions in politics and for all of us.”
As a result, the posts are becoming shorter and shorter. On TikTok, it is decided within the first second whether a video works or not. No wonder politicians do everything they can to quickly please people.
The other parties in the European election campaign are countering the AfD’s harsh and polarizing messages (which seem tailor-made for an attention and outrage economy on social media) with an endearing insignificance. Katarina Barley (SPD) works with quick video cuts to appear dynamic. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) wants to score points with the young potato challenge. Terry Reintke (Alliance 90/Greens) likes to play the personal touch, fresh with a clip-on microphone in his hand.
However, with the aim of speaking to the language of the target group, such self-staging (of whatever kind) can only end in pandering. Success is defined by virality. It’s not the substance that matters, but the pleasantness.
That may always have been the case in democracies. But here political content is degraded to a stunt in the media circus. That can be done. But then one should not be surprised if voting decisions are no longer based on political substance, but solely on mood.
A shallowing of political content is unfortunate, but in itself nothing new. All new media have led to a shortening of human attention in recent decades. TikTok is becoming dangerous
There is no such thing as “the Internet”. There is “your internet”, “your Netflix”, “your Instagram”, “your Spotify”, “your TikTok”, “your YouTube”. Basically, “social media” never existed either. It was “Individual Media” from the start. Platforms on which you are offered exactly what is supposed to suit you.
They are specifically designed to hijack human thinking, exploit the desire for self-affirmation and reinforce groupthink. TikTok’s slogan is: “Make your day.” The realization of the individual becomes the top priority. Or to put it another way: “You are the most important. And we’ll help you become even more ‘you’.”
In this way, the democracy-disrupting potential of social media lies in its construction. They let people revolve around their own opinions and confirm them with similar opinions until they become immune to other people’s perspectives. For example, how do you best bring an online Borussia Dortmund fan group together? By posting posts about Schalke 04 every now and then. You can be sure of the unifying furore of the Borussia team. In short: you make money on social media by the number of fronts. The more definable target groups there are, the higher the profit. This is how the decomposition of a cultural area becomes a business model.
Culturally you can already experience this concretely: There is the typical sound of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s – and the best of today. From the late 2000s onwards, music blurs into a hodgepodge of individual events. There is no longer the sound of the younger generation because thanks to the emerging streaming, everyone has their own sound on their ears. If you apply this concept to democracy, it will end.
If everyone is offered what is supposed to suit them (and nothing else is the business model of all platforms), what makes a democracy disappear: the exchange across opinion boundaries. Everyone used to watch the same news, read the same newspapers, listen to the same radio. They didn’t agree, but at least they were in the same debate room.
Today everyone has their own news, their own content, their own “online politicians”. This eliminates what you need if a pluralistic society wants to be successful: agreement about what you are talking about.
You can see what this can lead to in the USA. Social media has long been the main source of news here. With the effect that political actors are no longer tangible. There is no such thing as “Donald Trump”. There is “your Donald Trump”. Everyone sees various offerings of Trumpism online. Taken to the extreme, there are as many Donald Trumps as there are potential voters.
The same applies to the AfD in this country. They don’t exist. There are many AfDs that appear individually through group-specific online offers. Anyone who has ever wondered about the AfD’s erratic behavior on political issues: that is exactly their concept. Because that’s how you become invulnerable. The idea of the people’s party is being perverted. Instead of being a party for everyone, you become a party for everyone personally.
Now you could argue that people should be mature enough to break through this polarization. But I have to disappoint you. That doesn’t happen. When the online behavior of 54 million Facebook users was analyzed a few years ago, it was found that members of scientific groups are even more stubborn than conspiracy theorists in rejecting other people’s opinions. In other words, people who should really know better that they should question themselves from time to time.
It’s no surprise that a review from last year showed that social media can increase interest in political issues. However, it is precisely this increased interest that is then used to be even more radical and less open to opinions. Anyone who calls for political parties to please join TikTok
It may seem funny when Olaf Scholz goes viral on TikTok with his briefcase. But essentially he is becoming part of a system that is a threat to democracy. Because what happens to a democracy when everyone consumes their own news stream? Reality (and studies) show: democracies are becoming weaker. It should come as no surprise that extreme political positions in Western countries increased with the advent of social media.
After all, we can all have different opinions, but that wouldn’t endanger a democracy. It becomes problematic when there is no space in which people can talk to each other. That very space is being disrupted by hyper-personalized social media. Anyone who plays this political game on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram could become an accomplice in the long term. Whether intentionally or unintentionally.