Hello, you're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. Today I'm joined by my

colleague Malin Hay, an editor at the LRB, last heard interviewing B Wilson about Paul Newman, but joining me today to talk about book talk about book talk, the corner of the social media platform TikTok, where readers lurk, which she wrote a piece about in January. Hello, Malin.

Hello, Tom.

The TikTok is in the news this week because the British government has announced it's going to follow the lead of the US, EU and New Zealand and ban civil servants from having the app on their work devices, not because

it's a colossal time-waster, but because of security concerns. TikTok, the world's fastest-growing,

and possibly biggest, I don't know, you know better than me, as fast-as-growing social media

platform is Chinese-owned and Western governments are worried that the Chinese government could use it as a backdoor to access state secrets.

The US has said that it may even ban TikTok altogether unless the Beijing-based company Bite Dance sells its stake in the app.

The BBC is apparently encouraging its staff to delete TikTok from their work phones.

It's still allowed at the LRB, however, though my colleagues obviously only ever use it for

research purposes. Have you deleted the app since writing your piece, Mallet?

I actually have deleted the app since writing the piece, but more, not because of security

concerns, but more because it is a colossal time suck it's just so

addictive i think it's basically i think ticot is unusually addictive i mean i was addicted to

facebook in the back in the day i've been addicted to instagram nothing beats a ticot addiction

it's so intense because it is literally i, just to explain a little bit about the actual

mechanics of how TikTok works, you open the app and you see a video that's not necessarily

somebody that you've chosen to follow.

It's just literally presenting you with something.

And as soon as you get rid of that video is replaced by something else.

There is no landing page. As soon as you get onto the app, you're looking at content.

And also the content isn't necessarily related to each other. So you're being presented with

...