analysis
What opium and smoking once were, social media is today. Tiktok stuns many people and makes them addictive – not randomly, but systematically. However, there are important differences.
02/15/2026, 05:2902/15/2026, 05:29
Raffael Schuppisser / ch media
For Karl Marx, religion was the opium of the people in the 19th century: a supposed source of consolation with serious consequences. It numbs the senses, obscures the view of social reality and paralyzes the will of the proletarians to rebel against their earthly suffering. Because this is God’s will – salvation did not wait here, but in paradise.
Isolated from constant scrolling: Is Tiktok making our children sick?Image: keystone
In the 21st century, religion seems to have been replaced. Social media has taken its place. Tiktok is the crack pipe of the children’s room. Endless scrolling numbs the senses, distorts the view of one’s own self-image, is addictive and weakens the will to pull oneself together and do something other than watching content-free videos pass by on a small screen.
Forbid! Australia is a pioneer
Of course, the comparison with the crack pipe is just as exaggerated as Marx’s literary use of opium. But Tiktok, Instagram and Co. are already being seriously compared to smoking, for example when it comes to enforcing age restrictions in the name of protecting minors. Australia is a pioneer here. At the end of 2025, the government decided on a general social media ban for under-16s.
Other countries are following suit: In Denmark, the government announced in November that it wanted to introduce a minimum age of 15 years. Norway is also planning such a ban. France, Spain, Italy and Great Britain want to follow suit. And in Switzerland, parliament has instructed the Federal Council to examine how young people can be protected from excessive and harmful consumption of social media.
There is an interesting constellation in Germany: Here the conservative CDU wants a ban, but the Left and the SPD have recently spoken out against it. Instead of young people, the platforms themselves should be restricted. They should be obliged to adapt their product so that it loses its toxic effect – in other words, to develop cigarettes without harmful substances.
Like the Big Tobacco trials
The EU sees it similarly. Tiktok has an “addictive design” and therefore violates the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). This is due to the fact that infinite scrolling is possible, as well as videos that start automatically and a meticulously personalized recommendation system. The Tiktok parent company Bytedance therefore has to adapt its product, otherwise a fine will be due. However, the company wants to take legal action against this.
In the USA, the addictive nature of social media is already being argued in court – the lawsuits have been initiated by several private plaintiffs who feel that they have been harmed by the platforms. This is reminiscent of the trials against the tobacco industry. In the 1960s it was made clear that smoking was harmful to health. In the 1990s it also became clear that manufacturers were intentionally making consumers addicted. The lawyers of the social media victims now want such verdicts for Tiktok and Co.
But they will have a hard time. Unlike smoking, the scientific evidence on social media is much less clear. What is important is not social networks per se, but both the duration of use and the type of content consumed. A recently published study from Australia comes to the conclusion that complete abstinence does not automatically lead to greater well-being: those young people who used social media to a moderate extent performed best – better than their peers who abstained completely.
You can still network
Opium and crack show their negative effects quickly and clearly, with social media it is like with religion in the 19th century: much more complex. What matters most is how you use or practice it yourself – and what your own critical spirit is like.
Critics of a social media ban also like to argue that the networks help queer and transgender young people to connect and exchange ideas with like-minded people – which strengthens their psychological well-being.
It should probably be made clear here that social media is no longer what it was once designed for: namely, to connect people. There was a time when you reached the end of your feed on Instagram and were told that there were no new posts from friendly users. Today it is hardly your friends who determine what you see, but rather artificial intelligence, which calculates with statistical precision which posts interest you. It doesn’t need likes or followers. Even without a single “friend” you can scroll on Instagram and Tiktok for days.
Without human connection, social media loses its original purpose – and with AI taking over, users lose complete control. In the past, anyone who viewed a sexist or racist post on a social network did not help it gain more publicity; he had to like or share it. Today, a longer look at it is enough: the artificial intelligence interprets it as interest and flushes it into the streams of other users. Just looking at it now means:
Applied to the old media world, this would mean that anyone who reads Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for study purposes would help his disgusting messages gain more publicity. In short: reading “Mein Kampf” means: “I like it”. Reflection is impossible. In this respect, the new social media are anti-enlightenment in the sense of Immanuel Kant.
Marx would know what to do
So should social media be banned for the benefit of young people? Or force the platforms to make their design more humanistic? Ultimately, it is an old philosophical question: Should we eliminate supposed evil or try to make the world better?
For Marx the answer would be clear. His criticism of the “opium of the people” was not about the material, but rather about its social function. He did not criticize faith itself, but rather an order that anesthetized the critical spirit. The real question would therefore not be whether social media should exist – but what effect a society is prepared to accept from them. (aargauerzeitung.ch)