“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 2020 times: when they come for us, they’ll be performing short, comedic, lip-synched dance videos.” That’s how I described the 2020 Trump-led movement toward banning TikTok in my book Please Scream Inside Your Heart. Well, the effort is back as Congress introduces bill to ban TikTok. Years ago, two friends of mine, one at the CIA, one at the Pentagon, advised me to delete the app. So I don’t want to position the concerns about TikTok as an extreme position. Having a Chinese-owned social media app embedding itself into our lives is not without risk. But it’s worth noting that the things we fear from Chinese software companies—privacy invasions, data selling, democracy disruptions—are things that American social media companies have been doing with our full cooperation. It’s also worth noting that American social media companies have a particular interest in reducing competition from global players, and they’ve never faced this kind of a domestic business threat from a China-based company. In other words, the pressure to ban this outside app could be coming from inside players. All that said, I’ve been trying to pry TikTok from my daughter’s hands for years. If Congress, the CIA, and the Pentagon want get in on the struggle, I can use the help. Even working together, we don’t stand a chance.

+ In Canada, parents are leaning on the courts to deal with their kids’ screen habits. Parents who say their kids won’t eat or shower because they’re addicted to Fortnite slam Epic Games with lawsuit. (I assume my kids eat and shower, but since they became teens, I honestly haven’t had the guts to go downstairs to find out.)