INCLUSION & RESPECT | DECEMBER 7, 2023

75 Minutes to Love or Hate—The Choice Is Yours

It takes just over an hour—roughly 75 minutes—for TikTok to deliver Nazi content to a new user who didn’t search for it. According to a recent study, that is how easily and rapidly social media delivers radical content, even for those who aren’t in the market for it. Just 75 minutes.

Love vs. Hate — Image by MicroStuckHub/iStock via Getty Images

75 minutes. The average length of a Sunday church service. The time it takes to complete morning prayers at an Orthodox synagogue. The Sikh community prayer, Sukhmani Sahib, takes a little more than 75 minutes to recite, while a Hindu worship service—called puja, or “adoration”—generally takes a bit less.

Life is sacred and life is short—too short. How you spend yours is up to you.

75 minutes is all it takes to arrange clothing and shelter for a homeless child, give him a good square meal, hug him and tuck him into bed. 75 minutes should also be all the time necessary to ask forgiveness and make peace with a loved one or two. A warm family dinner—from grace to pumpkin pie—can leave one full with joy in just 75 minutes.

And within 75 minutes one can study Genesis through the part where God created man in His own image and the Quran through the passage forbidding any compulsion in religion. Or if one prefers, one can read the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and get well into the opening chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird, all well within 75 minutes. I know. I timed it.

The question that the study tried to answer is: How easy is it to radicalize an individual to the point of violence?

The more pertinent question is: Given an average global life expectancy of fewer than 75 years, why would anyone want to waste 75 minutes of those 75 years?

TikTok, its algorithms, its influence and its possible security risk are all in the spotlight with the recent surge in antisemitic hate. Urgent calls to correct the platform are coming from both sides of the aisle and every corner of the globe.

Few calls are underway, however, to correct a world more interested in scrolling than in scripture and in chaos than in kindness.

Life is sacred and life is short—too short.

How you spend yours is up to you. Loving or hating is—and always has been—your choice and yours alone.

And that decision takes far less than 75 minutes.

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AUTHOR

John Evans

John Evans has written for theater and the big screen. His essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in several publications on the East and West Coasts.

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