In Sweden, an unusual anxiety is afflicting children and young teenagers. Some can’t sleep. Some ask their parents if Russia is about to attack their country. Where did they get that idea? TikTok.
“War is coming,” say some of the videos that the social-media platform is feeding to young Swedes. Other videos tell their Swedish users that Russian forces will bomb their country or even invade. No wonder the children are becoming anxious. The Chinese-owned, algorithm-driven platform is, in fact, the perfect tool for a country wishing to weaken another country’s morale.
This weekend a question posted on Twitter turned into a gathering of adults concerned about things they’d been picking up from their nine-, ten-, eleven, twelve-year-old children and pupils. Is it true that information saying that war is coming to Sweden is being pumped out on TikTok? a Twitter user asked. The question drew dozens of parents to report that their young children had suddenly begun asking if Russia was about to invade.
“My 11-year-old was extremely frightened yesterday and asked whether there was going to be war soon,” one mother wrote.
Other parents reported that their children suddenly seemed anxious. When they asked what was the matter, it turned out the kids had been seeing the same kind of videos on TikTok. Elementary-school teachers reported that pupils had mentioned similar fears. Other parents checked with their children and sure enough, they’d seen them too.
On Saturday, the Swedish daily Aftonbladet reported that BRIS – a nationwide Swedish organization that advocates for children’s rights and operates a hotline for children and teenagers – had begun receiving phone calls from children and teenagers anxious about an impending invasion. BRIS social worker Marie Angsell told the newspaper that TikTok’s efficient algorithm, which has perfected individualized feeds, means that children and teenagers who view such videos once are consequently fed more of the same and end up overwhelmed by fear of a looming conflict. Angsell recommended that adults tell the children in their lives how the app works, to defuse the sense of impending calamity.
Children and teenagers suddenly overcome by fear of war, in a country that last saw a war more than two centuries ago and last mounted major territorial defenses in the 1980s? Someone is trying to weaken Sweden’s resolve by frightening children. To be sure, anyone might be concerned by news reports of the past week’s failed NATO-Russia negotiations, Russia’s veiled threat of “catastrophic consequence”, and Poland’s warning that Europe is on the brink of war. But few children, tweens, and teens read the newspaper: in Sweden, three percent do so on a daily basis. Some 30 percent, by contrast, use TikTok.