The Taliban government has banned video sharing application TikTok in Afghanistan, insisting they were leading Afghanistan’s youth astray. It has also banned Popular mobile game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have already banned music, movies and television soaps.
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The phone applications are popular among Afghans who have been left with little options for amusement.
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On Thursday, in a statement, the cabinet claimed the applications “led the young generation astray,” adding that the telecom ministry has been ordered to shut them down, news agency ANI reported.
The ANI report further said that it ordered the ministry to stop broadcasting “immoral material” on television channels, despite the fact that nothing is shown other than news and religious programmes.
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Nearly all Afghans (94 percent) rated their lives as bad enough to be considered suffering since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year, according to the results of a Gallur survey in February.
This was not only a record high for Afghanistan, but also the highest level of suffering that Gallup has measured for any country since 2005.
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Individuals are classified as “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering” by Gallup based on how they rate their current and future lives on a scale of zero to ten.
Just over nine million people have access to the internet across Afghanistan, a country of around 38 million people, according to figures published in January from DataReportal, an independent data collector, news agency AFP reported.
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There are around four million social media users, with Facebook being the most popular.
