Newly appointed Culture Minister Li Yuan (李遠) expressed his strong opposition to the social media app TikTok during the Legislature's Education and Culture Committee session on Wednesday. Taiwan has classified TikTok as a threat to national cybersecurity since 2019, prohibiting its use within government departments.
Li says that he considers TikTok a form of cognitive warfare that diminishes users' patience and hampers young people's ability to organize and process thoughts. Li, who formerly worked as a school principal, added that today's youth struggle to watch films from start to finish and that watching short videos inhibits people’s capacity for organized thinking.
Li acknowledges the challenges of completely banning TikTok in a free and democratic society like Taiwan and says that existing laws make it difficult to impose an outright ban, allowing only partial restrictions.