Senegal, Somalia, Bangladesh, China, India, Belgium, France, Russia, and The United Kingdom. Every one of these countries has established some form of a ban on TikTok, and the list is only growing, with the United States recently following suit. But to fully understand why this is happening, we’ll have to look at TikTok’s (relatively) brief but eventful history.
TikTok, founded by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, was first released in September of 2016. Formed under ByteDance, a massively influential technology company, the app experienced quick success, skyrocketing to the forefront of social media platforms globally. As CNBC reports, TikTok was downloaded over 100 million times in the Apple App Store in the first half of 2018; following its merger with the app Musical.ly, it grew to become the most downloaded app in the United States.
However, evidenced by the app’s global controversy, success often comes with backlash. In 2019, India first banned TikTok due to its “inappropriate content,” risk of predation for minors, and “protection of data and privacy,” as reported by The Guardian. Many countries soon followed suit for similar reasons.
As TikTok began to be banned on government and work devices in several countries, another prominent concern emerged — national security. As TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, there have been various allegations of the Chinese government using the app to collect user data. In 2020, President Donald Trump proposed a ban on TikTok due to concerns that it is a “national security threat,” leading to various legal conflicts between TikTok and the Trump Administration.
Two years later on December 30, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, banning the use of TikTok on federal government devices (with some exceptions). On March 13, 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, restricting TikTok’s operations in the United States. After being revised and passed through the House of Representatives and the Senate, Joe Biden signed the act into law on April 24, 2024, resulting in a lawsuit from ByteDance, Tiktok’s parent company, on May 7, 2024.
Several students have expressed their thoughts on the ban. Sophia Z. ’27 felt mixed feelings: “As a TikTok user, I would be a little disappointed, but overall, I think it’s for the better,” she said. In a separate interview, Kabir S. ’27 expressed a slightly different outlook, commenting “I don’t have TikTok, and it seems like all of my friends who do have TikTok [would be] heavily impacted by [the ban]. [H]opefully they’ll get off their phones and look up and talk more.”
But, if the president already signed the ban into law, why is TikTok still available on phones? The ban technically isn’t in effect yet. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act gave ByteDance nine months to sell its subsidiary in the US, meaning an official ban still needs around a year to be implemented.
So for now, try and enjoy TikTok as much as possible; in a year, the app, now used for sharing information, lip-syncing, cooking, POVs, and dancing, could be gone.
