The problem is not the application, it's the people. We've gotten to the point where people are willing to spend endless hours for entertainment (long, or short content).
Social (and non-social) media is able to capture peoples' attentions for far too long. Instead of being bored, and having their minds wonder and attempt other tasks, they are endlessly entertained.
People no longer have time to try other things, or explore their own creativity and curiosity. They instead turn to media to satisfy that curiosity, and that's the issue. As much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, we're heading deep down a hive-mind rabbit hole of propaganda. I don't follow tiktok, but I'm influenced by it every day due to my friends who try or follow new trends based on what they see.
The point of a government is to protect it's citizens, and it's failing terribly. Even going on Reddit, I only see negative posts about the United States, and people arguing how bad it is to live here. Yet, while traveling outside the US, I barely see 5-10% of those posts, but no other posts about how bad it is to live in those countries (granted the US has a far higher population). It just seems like people on social media are shitting on the US these days for reasons that they dont even understand, or know how to compare to anywhere else.