TikTok is one of the most popular social media entertainment apps. The app has 170 million American users that were banned from the platform on January 18th. The app did not just disappear from everyone’s phone, but a screen popped saying users are no longer able to access the app. Many teenagers prepared for the ban by figuring out what app they were going to use instead.
Ardyn Hancock, a student at Atherton said, “As of right now I’m not planning on moving to a new app because I want to see what everyone else does.”
Government officials are acting under the The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFCA). This act was signed into law by President Biden in April of 2024. This act says that the government has the power to ban foreign apps that are seen as a threat to America’s National Security. Then in March of last year, Biden gave Tiktok owner ByteDance 9 months to sell the app to an approved U.S company. ByteDance did not want to sell and decided to fight the ban. However, the Supreme Court upheld it and the app was set to be banned on January 19th.
While this was happening, President Trump talked about how when the ban occurred he was going to delay the ban for 75 days with an executive order. On the night of January 18th, the app went dark for 12 hours. When a person tried to open the app a screen would pop up saying TikTok was not available and options to either close the app or to learn more. After those 12 hours, TikTok began working on people’s phones again due to Trump’s executive order. There has been a lot of discourse about Trump’s intentions with the delay of this ban since he was the one who put the banning in motion before Biden got into office.
Christine Bashobana, a student at Atherton says, “Trump used the banning of TikTok as a way to manipulate the younger generation because the idea of banning TikTok started with him. It was his and he knows how important TikTok is to people’s lives, especially to people making their living off the app. He is trying to appear to everyone as their savior to make people forget about what he has done in the past.”
As of right now everyone is unsure of what the next steps are from Donald Trump, since the executive order is only temporary. There are a few things that Trump may do to make sure Tiktok does not get banned eventually:
One thing he can do is try to convince congress to repeal the act that set the banning of TikTok into motion (PAFCA). This will be tricky because the act was voted into law by overwhelming support from the senate and the house. He could also convince the Department of Justice and the attorney general to not enforce the act. But that’s a long shot because it leads to legal risk and many fines. Many think the most promising course of action is convincing an American company to buy Tik Tok so that it is not a national security threat anymore. There was a lot of speculation on potential buyers of Tiktok, such as Elon Musk and Mr.Beast, however no information has been confirmed.
Many people deleted Tiktok the night it got banned, not expecting the app to bounce back the next day. TikTok is technically unbanned, but people are not allowed to download it anymore in order to discourage new users.
Ruth Santiestban, a senior at Atherton who deleted the app says, “I deleted the app and now I have FOMO since everyone else has it back. However my screen time is way down so maybe it was for the best.”
As of right now, there is not a lot of definitive knowledge about TikTok’s fate. If the app does end up getting banned down the road it is likely that either a new app with short form content will replace it, like Instagram Reels, or people will switch back to longer form content and Youtube will become popular again.
