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Post Created by Adonai Baptista on Tuesday, March 18th, 2025
The social media landscape has naturally been shifting over the past few years with new features being added to our favourite platforms and the overall innovation of social media developers skyrocketing to increase user engagement. With these new and innovative options at our disposal, we’ve also seen the dramatic offset that removing one of those options can cause.
Yes, I am referring to the TikTok ban.
Growing concerns about data privacy mixed with complex political functions and agendas have brought us to a space where American citizens are worried that a key source of entertainment, communication, and professional growth can be removed with little to no regard for the opinion of the people. However, innovation has never before yielded to the restrictions of government nor a shift in ideologies; from the general users who only interacted with the platform for doom scrolling to the strategic business owners who utilised the platform for marketing purposes, social media users are finding new ways to engage with and create the content they want — and rightfully deserve.
As the son of a serial entrepreneur and a current business owner myself, I’ve seen the importance of having a diversity of engagement channels to connect with your target audience. In simpler terms, using Instagram is helpful, but using Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn altogether is far more beneficial for reaching an audience. I’ve seen some incredible content creators who poured their all into social media ultimately be forced to start from scratch when their accounts were hacked or wrongfully taken down. And, the irony is, so many were faced with circumstances almost exactly identical to that with the ”banning” of TikTok.
That’s wild!
So, besides being livid and utterly outraged, what are users doing now? How have they responded to this drastic shift in their daily routines? And, which platforms are people flocking to?
First, though, here’s a little background for those of you who aren’t too familiar with why TikTok was banned or who simply never had the chance to use it in the first place. Beginning in 2020, the United States government has been increasingly concerned about the influence of TikTok and the potential implications of having US citizens' data readily available to the Chinese government. Furthermore, concerns around the dissemination of political information and the spread of fake news emerged as well. This was the case so much so that all military personnel were required to remove the platform from both their personal and work-issued devices to ensure and maintain privacy.
With all of these issues and the overall alarm that TikTok created within the US government, President Donald Trump ordered that the company be sold to an American-owned entity to minimise concerns surrounding government and individual privacy infringement. The process of seeing this through was a long one that included SCOTUS decisions, congressional hearings, and complete public uproar about media censorship , however, a full presidential term later, TikTok was banned.
Crazy, right? Well, funnily enough, TikTok is still alive and well even though it's technically banned.
Now, with a majority of Americans feeling like the US government is playing with their feelings and President Trump’s super exciting history with social media, people are experiencing all the stages of grief at once while figuring out how to move forward with rules that seem to be changing daily.
What we’re seeing now is a diversification of content consumption. In other words, people are using a number of different social media as opposed to focusing on one in particular. From the infamous — and often questionable — YouTube Shorts to the latest Instagram Reels, social media users are ultimately just trying to see what sticks and works best for them. And, while some of these users are turning to their entire arsenal of social media platforms, others have even taken this mini-ban as a sign to rid themselves of social media as a whole.
Speaking with a friend of a friend, I heard that this ban was “like turning a new leaf” with the added benefit of freeing some users from the addictive prison of social media use. She shared that “at first, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was livid with this decision. But, at the end of the day, now I’m all the much better because of it.” Another avid fan of the platform added, “I lost TikTok, but I lowkey regained my time. [I] can’t really complain about that, can I?”
Regardless of your individual view on this matter, what we all have to appreciate is the freedom of perspective. On one hand, you could still be furious about this brief ban happening in the first place and continuing fighting to find a half-baked replacement. Or, on the other hand, — as wild as it might sound — you could take this as a new opportunity to be productive.
Just a thought… 🤷♂️
** This is an ongoing story **
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