From my perspective TikTok is worse because it’s algorithm is better at holding human addition, and it’s headquarters is located in an authoritative country. I don’t have any evidence to defend these statements, and it’s quite possible propaganda has influenced by opinion here. I’d love to hear from the experts.

It's interesting because they're both bad but in different ways. Facebook's addictive nature is in interacting with other people: FB wants you to start flame wars in the comments, share things around with people, etc. FB tries to connect you with other people to hate them. Facebook distorts a person's idea of OTHER PEOPLE. Facebook is like meeting the Duggers and assuming they're representative of all Americans. Facebook makes people angry and aggressive.

TT's addictive nature is more insidious because it's more internal: Humans are pattern-matching machines and TikTok will show you a LOT of very niche content to the point where your brain thinks it's important and true (think TV/movie product placement; they wouldn't do it if it didn't work). Because of TT's form, it's harder for the average person (non-creator) to be drawn into a social group, but it's easier for them to be firehosed into accepting false narratives through sheer repetition. TT distorts a person's idea of HOW PEOPLE LIVE; imagine if your main idea of how Americans live was USSR propaganda. TT makes people apathetic and prone to hug-boxes.

They're both taking advantage of the fight-or-flight mechanism, FB just wants you to fight and TT wants you to 'flee' (into its loving escapist arms, of course).

There are healthy use cases for both FB and TT (and even Twitter), but they're directly at odds with the incentives of the platforms themselves + we have a society full of unhealthy and traumatized people, so instead you get these evil clone versions.

I'd also say that both the US and China are authoritarian countries. China more so, but the mental health/addictive problems with TT are inherent to its design and medium decisions, not which nationality made it.

It's algo is actually showing me what I'm interested at not some reddit-tier meaningless political fighting. Despite headquartered in authoritative country I'm the user experience is better with less drama. Go figure.

TikTok seems like a more casual/fun experience to me. I suppose it depends on how you use it. My son and I have a great time watching animal videos, jokes and some other stuff.

I never got into instagram, but Facebook is always trying to lure me in with suggestive “interviews” of college girls and weird mom videos on the Facebook feed, which is otherwise very curated.

Tiktok actually shows you content you'd like to see. So in that sense it's "addictive." It shows me weird local commercials, retro computing stuff, and clips from old industrial films.

'Reels' is a lot worse. It shows you generic stuff that's slightly personalized by things you "liked" over a decade ago. No reason to use it.

I would say TikTok is even more addictive than Facebook, considering its larger market share at this moment.

TikTok is a maximizer of wasted attention.