TikTok Distorts Users' Grasp of Reality in High-Profile Criminal Trials
Source: Eddie Scarry. "If You Have Mixed Feelings On Lindsay Clancy's Guilt, Get Off TikTok." September 2, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that TikTok is dangerously distorting people's understanding of real criminal cases, citing two examples where friends who followed trials on TikTok ended up believing conspiracy theories that contradicted well-established facts—including denying that a mother who admitted to killing her children was actually guilty. Because of this, the author concludes that people susceptible to this kind of misinformation shouldn't be allowed to use TikTok at all.
Conclusion
People who form opinions about high-profile criminal cases primarily through TikTok, and who end up denying clear facts or siding with admitted killers, cannot be trusted to consume TikTok content and should be cut off from it.
Premises
- In the Lindsay Clancy case, the basic facts are undisputed: three children were strangled, Clancy did not deny killing them, and her defense rested on mental illness, not innocence.
- Despite these undisputed facts, TikTok users (including the author's friend) claimed the timeline 'doesn't add up' and suggested Clancy's husband was the real culprit.
- A similar pattern occurred in the 2023 Alex Murdaugh trial, where TikTok users following the case doubted his guilt despite strong evidence, including his own admitted lies.
- In both cases, people who relied on TikTok as their primary news source ended up believing conclusions directly contradicted by trusted news sources and trial evidence.
- This represents a broader pattern of otherwise rational people being 'seduced' into fantasy narratives by TikTok content that ignores established facts.
- Siding with someone who has admitted to killing her own children, based on unfounded theories, constitutes a severe and dangerous departure from reality.
Assumptions
- TikTok content about criminal cases is systematically less reliable or more sensationalized than traditional news sources like CNN.
- Two anecdotal cases (the author's friend and acquaintance) are representative of a broader, widespread phenomenon among TikTok users generally.
- Traditional news sources the author trusts are accurate and unbiased in their reporting of these cases.
- There is a clear, binary distinction between 'reality-based' views and TikTok-influenced views, with no legitimate space for alternative theories or reasonable doubt in high-profile trials.
- The solution to misinformation is restricting access to the platform rather than improving media literacy or critical thinking.
- People's cognitive or moral capacities ('brains') are the fundamental problem, rather than the platform's algorithmic or content curation issues.