> [!note] Bullhorn's Takes > ## We think > > Great read for the current moment. But what is overlooked: > 1. [[Attention Economy]] politics are almost never local. > 2. Local politics were a buffer to polarization. Now they don’t precisely exist, because no one reads about them. > 3. “LOL” about anything substantive with respect to policy going viral. ## This moment demands more than headlines In a time of noise, confusion, and spin, we’re committed to clarity, truth, and depth — even when it’s hard. That kind of journalism isn’t easy. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. **Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?** I don’t remember looking for anything in particular when I opened [TikTok](https://www.vox.com/tiktok) one February evening. What I do remember was one video that dared me to examine my digital diet. “Check your TikTok screen time,” user @katherout challenged me. “Then check how many hours last week you actually hung out with your friends. It should not be similar... It’s very possible that you spend more time with people you don’t know on TikTok and [YouTube](https://www.vox.com/youtube), than people you do know in real life.” And so I checked. At my peak, I was using TikTok — a social media platform famous for user-uploaded short-form videos — for a little over 10 hours a week. In the same week, I’d spent around 11 hours hanging out with friends. My experience is not unusual. For many Americans, Tiktok has become one of the great time sucks of the era, a perpetual engagement machine with an algorithm that knows how to keep you glued. That superpower — Tiktok’s ability to keep us watching and watching and watching — is something that has experts, pundits, and politicians worried. Today, tens of millions of young people say that they’re [getting their news from TikTok](https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/). What exactly are they seeing, and how is that affecting what they believe? TikTok counts some 150 million Americans among its monthly users, many of them young people who spend [hours](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/#:~:text=falls%20below%20%2475%2C000.-,How%20much%20time%20are%20teens%20spending%20online%3F,-In%20addition%20to) to continue reading. > [!note] More of Bullhorn's Takes > Serious, detached and rational has never been what a functional politics is about. > - Maybe serious at times. War and Depression aren't funny.... but they are made fun of. Keeps people sane > - And though while certainly not detached or rational, our politics used to be about things that weren't chosen identities or personal expression. <audio></audio> <audio></audio> 1/1