Annelle, a 24 year old trans woman and I are talking about TikTok. She expresses grief and sadness about the upcoming ban on it, and as I listen to her describe what it provided her through the past few years I am struck by that grief. I say to her, “I know you know the algorithm is not human, but I wonder if you felt understood and recognized by it with the content it gave you on TikTok.”
“Absolutely,” she replies, “the algorithm knew I was trans before I did.”
She discusses the ways it showed her content before she even could name that she was in the process of becoming aware of where gender dysphoria was coming from, and showing her possibilities she was as yet unconsciously yearning for.
This week, if this ban goes into effect, will be a week of inestimable loss to many users of TikTok, particularly those who are already marginalized by our society. The algorithm will become unavailable to them as a self-object. Self-objects, a part of the self-psychology theory of Heinz Kohut are not people. Rather they are the experiences of another person that have been internalized as well as the function that experience provided. Simply put, art, nature, culture and yes, algorithms can provide us with self-object functions. If we ignore or minimize that, we will miss important losses our patients experience.
Self-objects provide three basic functions according to Kohut.
They provide mirroring, showing us that we exist and have value. When you get an A, or you come home from school and your artwork goes on the refrigerator, you are being mirrored. When straight people see themselves in movie after movie they are mirrored in a way that LGBTQIA people never have been. When white cis heterosexual folks get outraged at how woke Disney is, in part it is because their mirroring has been momentarily disrupted, white heteronormativity has been decentralized, and anxiety flares.
The second self-object function, idealizing, occurs when we admire someone or something and aspire to become like it or merge with its perceived powerfulness. When you sit on an adult’s shoulders and can be higher and see farther they are functioning this way. Now that we have Sarah McBride in Congress, openly transgender people can aspire to leading the country in a visible way.
The third self-object function, twinship, becomes most notable in adolescence, but is lifelong. It functions by giving us a sense of belonging, being like others. Your best friends sharing playlists on Spotify, that kink community on Fetlife, 12-Step Groups and church congregations, all provide this self-object function so that the individual does not feel alone, apart or outcast.
This Sunday, TikTok and its algorithm may be banned. Personally I doubt our nation’s security will be that much the stronger for it, especially as Meta has signaled its intent to withdraw fact-checking and loosen hate speech standards in ways that will allow for more misinformation and domestic terrorism in the future. What will be true is that individuals will be cut off from an algorithm that provided for many a sense of being seen, a window of possibility to be more, and a community where they felt welcomed.
This is not just psychologically harmful, it is one of the ways totalitarianism takes root. As Arendt, observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.”
I hope you are asking your patients how they are feeling about the potential loss of TikTok, it is important to many of them. As I have said before, technology amplifies; affect, conflict, accessibility, polarization, and identity, among other things. In the midst of moral panics we run the risk of silencing and muting people and democracy at our peril. I have used several trans examples above because they are the one of the first and most noticeable group being targeted and impacted. As history shows us, they will not be the last.
Arendt, H. (2004). The origins of totalitarianism (1st ed.). Schocken Books.