TikTok’s Plot to Transition Teenagers

People who have “detransed” (returned to the genders of their birth after “transitioning”) have shared very disturbing and similar stories of how they were “convinced” to go Trans by social media.

For example, 23-year-old Helena Kirschner, in her heart-wrenching autobiographical piece “By Any Other Name,” writes, “when I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary.” Helena then goes on to — trace her pursuit of gender transition back to her adolescent obsession with Tumblr’s pastel-colored icons of waifish androgyny. The time spent on these blogs began to distort her self-perception. Eventually, they led her to virtual haunts where her “friends” blamed her teenage angst on “being born in the wrong body.”

Helena is far from alone. 

Other detransitioners, such as Keira Bell and Grace Lidinsky-Smith, also say that they were exposed to gender ideology online. There is significant evidence that shows that the majority of those who transitioned were persuaded to do so online through social media, blogs, and YouTube.

The unprecedented spike in teens transitioning and the rise of their use of social media is in no way a coincidence.

Like it or not, the greatest influence on our kids’ ideas of societal norms and morality comes from social media these days. Why do you think YouTube “stars” are better known as “influencers.” 

You may think that most of what teens see on social media is innocent enough, but you would be surprised by how much sexual and transgender content saturates the digital spaces where most teens hang out. A simple hashtag search will instantly load thousands of LGBTQ posts on just about any given social media platform. For example, on WattPad, a new social media platform, one search turns up over 4.5 million original story uploads. Or consider TikTok. A search for “top surgery” loads countless clips of young women flaunting mutilated chests with millions of views.

This isn’t new. It has been going on for a long time. Sexual content and social media were a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on your point of view. For years, Tumblr allowed adult content to its servers before changing its policies. Others, like Twitter, continue to allow pornography on their platforms. With respect to transgender content, TikTok updated its community guidelines this year so that “anti-LGBTQ+ content” is no longer allowed. More recently, Twitter, which has long censored dissenters, has been deplatforming those who say transgender activism is “grooming.”

Given the high rates of tech usage among teens and the ideologically motivated design of digital spaces, it’s no wonder more Gen Z’ers – who grew up in a world that was never devoid of the internet, smartphones, or social media – identify more often as trans than any other previous generation.

This is exactly what radical transgender activists want. They have long championed access to pornographic content online as essential to the “queer ecosystem” and to LGBTQ youth “self-discovery.” This is why the Human Rights Campaign insists that teens need to have access to online spaces, where they “have privacy” to “find out more” about their gender. 

It’s also why GLAAD, another LGBT activist group, is pressuring social media platforms to adopt policies that protect trans content. And when it comes to parents, activists argue that a parent’s restriction of transgender and sexual content online is “rejecting behavior.”

These kinds of decisions about what youth need to hear or see should not be made by Big Tech employees in Silicon Valley. Instead, parents, with the help of policymakers, should be better empowered to care for and protect their kids online.