On January 19, The New York Times Opinion section (Left bias) published an op-ed from a 17-year-old high school student who argued TikTok should be banned because she's too addicted to it.

The piece, titled “I’m a 17-Year-Old TikTok Junkie. I Need This Ban”, authored by Juliet Weisfogel, was published shortly after President Donald Trump and his cabinet nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said they wanted to “save” the platform.

Weisfogel makes her case as follows:

"You see, I’m a 17-year-old TikTok junkie, and I wholeheartedly support a law that would sever me forever from my fix. My support for this ban has nothing to do with national security."

Despite a TikTok ban being publicly discussed since 2019, Weisfogel’s stance has not often appeared in media discourse, as there are plenty of popular alternative platforms for teens to turn to, and the U.S. government’s stated origin of the ban has been national security concerns.

But for such a young writer with no public journalism experience or online presence to secure such a major byline for her first published work is very atypical and newsworthy in and of itself.

As Weisfogel has no other published works, it’s impossible to determine her bias or overall writing style. So let’s dig into this journalistic debut and explore how this opinion may have made its way to the pages of The Times.

Who Is Juliet Weisfogel?

As The Times notes, Weisfogel is a high school junior at the Trevor Day School. Trevor Day is a private school located in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and charges tuition up to $65,700 per year.

Shortly after the article was published, AllSides searched to see if she had other published works, but all that returned of note was a LinkedIn page that appears to have been made at the same time the opinion was published. As of early January 20, Weisfogel had just two connections on the platform, and the only post she made was to share her NYT piece, further evidencing that she doesn’t have proper journalism experience.

AllSides did not find any other public social media or online presence for Weisfogel, though we were able to locate and verify her personal Instagram account, which we will not share out of respect for her privacy.

A deeper search revealed that Weisfogel is the daughter of Rebecca (nèe Liss) and Amiel Weisfogel. The New York Times (Lean Left) ran news coverage of their wedding in 2004.

The two also have relatively low profiles online. In 2004, NYT wrote they were both producers for the CBS News (Lean Left) program 60 Minutes. Rebecca’s LinkedIn confirms this, stating she was with the program from 1998 until 2011. Amiel’s LinkedIn says he was with 60 Minutes from 2000 until 2005. After a short stint with ESPN (Lean Left) until 2007, he returned to CBS and has been a producer of CBS Sunday Morning since.

Weisfogel's parents' media experience could explain how she was able to land such a major byline as her first published work.

Banning TikTok: About China, or Gaza?

As stated earlier, Weisfogel's argument – that TikTok should be banned for the sake of young adults' mental health – has not been often heard in media discourse. Discussions have focused mostly on national security. 

The concern was first raised by Republicans during Trump’s first presidency, with emphasis on the Chinese origin of TikTok's parent company ByteDance. 

After Hamas' October 7, 2023 terror attack on southern Israel, pro-Palestinian speech on the platform added bipartisan fuel to the fire. 

Since then, prominent American politicians like Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Gov. Chris Murphy (D-CT), former Biden administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), and former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) have openly and explicitly voiced concern over the accessibility of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok. This has been well-documented by mainstream outlets from the left and center like Rolling Stone (Left), Newsweek (Center), and The Hill (Center).

The minds of many Democrats apparently changed between the initial Republican push to ban TikTok and April 2024, when the ban cleared both the House and Senate in a bipartisan “landslide” before making its way to signature on President Biden’s desk.

Since the ban was approved in April 2024, many left-wing publications, including TruthOut (Left), The Intercept (Left), Jacobin (Left), and American Jewish publication The Forward (Lean Left), have published opinions arguing the ban is also aimed at controlling information flow on the war in Gaza and protecting Israel. The most recent of these opinions, from The Forward, was published just recently, on January 15.

Contrary to these politicians, Weisfogel initially claimed her stance “has nothing to do with national security,” though later in the article she seems to imply it is at least of some concern, writing:

“Our sleep, our waking hours and our thoughts are surrendered to content creators collecting dimes off our time — and to the coffers of ByteDance itself.”

Without other published works, detecting Weisfogel's personal bias or writing style is not possible, so her opinion, which seems to contradict itself at least a little bit, can only be viewed in a vacuum.

However, since it's so atypical for a writer's first byline to be as high-profile as an NYT Opinion feature, it’s plausible she was assisted by others in shaping the piece – possibly her parents and/or The Times’ opinion editors.

Foreign Influence on American Mainstream Media

All publications have editors who assist writers in fleshing out their works, but The Times opened itself to an additional level of scrutiny by acknowledging it has previously published an opinion at least partially written by foreign intelligence officials.

In 2014, The New York Times published the opinion "Let North Korea Collapse" by Sue Mi Terry.

The Times reported in July 2024 that Sue Mi Terry was charged by Biden's Justice Department for acting as a foreign agent for South Korea.

The DOJ alleged Terry worked with South Korean agents to embed the country’s desired talking points into opinion pieces in major American publications.

On the indictment, The Times reported, “At first, she mainly published opinion articles favorable to South Korea’s stance on North Korea, but soon she was facilitating meetings between incoming Trump administration officials and South Korean intelligence agents in 2016… Ms. Terry made media appearances and wrote articles in American and South Korean publications reflecting Seoul’s policy priorities, the indictment said, including an opinion piece for The New York Times in 2014.”

As recently as late 2024, Israeli intelligence has reportedly aimed to influence American mainstream media. Its target was coincidentally CBS News.

The Israeli publication Haaretz (Lean Left) reported on December 24, 2024, that Mossad director David Barnea “eagerly facilitated exclusive cooperation with CBS's ‘60 Minutes,’” to paint its pager attack against Hezbollah “in a favorable light.”

Haaretz wrote, “Previously, details of the pagers operation were tightly controlled by the military censor over national security concerns. Yet Barnea eagerly facilitated exclusive cooperation with CBS's ‘60 Minutes.’ The rationale provided was that such collaboration could enhance Israel's deterrence, conduct psychological warfare against our adversaries, and ensure that the program presented Mossad and Israel in a favorable light, reducing the risk of hostile narratives.”

None of this, of course, means Weisfogel, her parents, or the NYT are acting as foreign agents, or even necessarily pro-Israel. Juliet Weisfogel is just a high school student after all, and her byline could have realistically been earned through nepotism.

However, the timing and circumstances of this uncommon opinion being published by an entirely unknown writer in a paper as high-profile as The New York Times are quite unusual.

Andy Gorel is a News and Social Media at AllSides. He has a Center bias.

This blog was reviewed and edited by Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right), and Evan Wagner, News Editor and Product Manager (Lean Left).