In the modern age, where social media has a hold on all of us, TikTok stands above the rest, captivating the attention spans of millions of Americans (170 million to be exact). But it stands in legal limbo within the United States courts. In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed a bill stating that if the Chinese company ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok to a US government-approved company, the app was to be potentially banned in America on Jan. 19, 2025. The bill was put in place as a national security measure, as the District of Columbia US Court of Appeals suspects that the Chinese parent company has been collecting data from US citizens through TikTok. ByteDance has come out firmly stating that they have no plans to sell TikTok to any American company.
“Honestly, it’ll probably be better for me I think, because I can actually stay focused and not want to just scroll mindlessly for hours,” sophomore Arianna Dangi said.
The impact of this ban would be immediately apparent throughout the internet. TikTok is one of the largest providers of short-form entertainment on the internet. Anyone who has browsed Instagram Reels or Youtube Shorts will see an abundant amount of reposted content imported from TikTok. And it’s hard to forget the TikTok Shop. If American businesses were banned from selling on the platform, many small creators and businesses would not get nearly as much traffic as they used to. With such a large portion of TikTok’s user base banned from the platform, people would be left wondering what is going to happen to content creation as a whole, and how well people would adjust.
“It’ll ruin a lot because no one really cares about any other social media as much as TikTok,” junior Robert Silzle said. “People spend way too much time with it and now they’ll have to get used to not doing that. I’m sure eventually Instagram Reels will take over, but people aren’t gonna be super happy about it.”
It’s easy to be skeptical, however. People wonder if this ban is really legit. In 2020, when President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok, ByteDance claimed they wouldn’t even consider selling TikTok. Now that real executive action has been taken under President Biden, they stand on their statement that TikTok will not be sold.
Douyin is ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok, and is by far their biggest seller. There are around 120 million U.S. TikTok users, paling in comparison to the 750 million Chinese Douyin users. Although Americans are the second largest demographic for TikTok, falling just behind Indonesia, the user base of the entire continent of North America is just a fraction of the users in China. ByteDance has no incentive whatsoever to sell to an American company, as America is far from their main demographic.
“In the end, it’s just going to get replaced by something else,” band director Ryan Curtis said. “People move on. Things aren’t gonna get better and things aren’t gonna get worse, people are just going to move on.”
Before TikTok there was Musical.ly, and before Musical.ly, there was Vine. The people will just have to see what comes next, if the supreme court approves the bill that President Biden signed, TikTok is in the ground.
