Does your kid love TikTok? You must read this

Welcome to the bifurcated world of Tik-Tok, an emerging social-media powerhouse that lets users create and share short videos, many no longer than 15 seconds.

From the perspective of teens, TikTok is a significant new outlet for self-expression, one proudly home to the silly, the loud and the weird.

To others, the Chinese-owned online video service is an unnerving black box that may be sharing information with the Chinese government, facilitating espionage, or maybe promoting videos and songs some parents consider lewd.

U.S. lawmakers are worried about national security and censorship risks posed by TikTok’s Chinese ownership.

TikTok draws so much attention because it’s the first China-owned social-media service to make serious inroads in the West. It’s a smash in the U.S. and other countries, attracting celebrities and companies wanting to reach kids and young adults disconnected from traditional media.

But many security authorities worry about the info sucked up by the service. People’s social connections, biometric data and interests that might be useful to an advertiser may possibly also assist a hostile government in cultivating spies or tracking dissidents, says John Dermody, a former official with the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security.

TikTok now insists that it doesn’t do so, nor would it not regardless if the Chinese government asked it to. For spying, the business denies it and says it stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore, not China.

But whatever is said, it doesn't take away from the actual fact that to numerous users, what’s special is TikTok’s goofiness and sense of fun. To use, just download the iphone app and begin swiping through videos.

You don’t need to friend anyone or seek out anything to watch. Upon this app you are likely to encounter a barrage of funny, meme-y videos from total strangers that TikTok spools up for you personally, personalizing the feed as you go.