Some lawmakers want to ban TikTok? But why is it so popular?
By: Lishele Liyuwork
June 2nd 2023
On March 23 TikTok’s Chief Executive, Shou Zi Chew, was brought before Congress and interrogated by U.S. lawmakers about the app’s possible connection to the Chinese government. This hearing exposed how uneducated the U.S. representatives really are about how phones, apps, and social media really work. Just this past week Montana became the first state to officially ban TikTok starting January 1, 2024.
Before tiktok was the entertainment powerhouse it is today the app was called musical.ly. Mostly composed of lip-syncing middle schoolers, Musical.ly was created in 2014 by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, then bought by ByteDance in 2017. In 2018 Musical.ly was absorbed by TikTok, which was already a ByteDance app. In 2016 Musical.ly had 120 million users worldwide, 64% being between the ages of 13-24. Now, TikTok has over 1 billion users worldwide, with around 38% of users being 18-24 and an increasing 32% being ages 25-34.
Unlike the US officials, most people don’t seem too concerned with the threat of the Chinese government mining their data for nefarious purposes. The main drawback of TikTok, especially for students, seems to be how much time it can take out of their day.
"I was spending too much time on it," said 10th grader Toni Kae. “It was taking so much time out of my day, and probably messing me up at school too.”
With its seconds long videos and its app being formatted perfectly for scrolling for hours on end, people can spend hours on Tiktok and not even realize. Users spend an average of 95 minutes (more than an hour and a half) every day on the app.
"I go on the app, and then I look up and it's like, an hour and a half," said Miss Curless, an english teacher at Carver. "I also think that instant quick swipes mess with our attention."
Even though there are some things that TikTok users should be aware of while using the app, users also report a lot of benefits. Tiktok can be an outlet for people to share their creativity and discover new interests. While the short form content may cause issues with attention span, those quick videos also offer digestible ways to get information.
"For me, TikTok is a wonderful educational experience,” says Miss Bartkus, a teacher here at Carver. “During COVID and being confined to my house, my For You page was hitting me with a lot of mental health resources, which I found to be really helpful. Also, it really kept me in the loop. Like, politically what was going on in the country in the world.”
From the rising cost of living to the climate crisis, living in the world can be extremely overwhelming and stressful. Tiktok can be a way to decompress and have a break from everything that is going on.
Miss Curless explains what drew her to TikTok saying, “It's just funny. Like there's such funny stuff it's like you could just scroll forever and everything's hilarious.”
The U.S. banning TikTok could be considered in violation of the First Amendment, but universities across the country are banning TikTok from their devices. This new approach may seem harsh for an app made up of 30 second clips, but would some control be such a bad thing? So much of our lives are shared on social media and how much we choose to share is a personal choice that everyone has to make. But drawing a line between the personal and the professional within job policy may be a step that employers and administration will need to take to avoid any incidents.