TikTok Ban: What do the people think?

To figure out what everyone was thinking more clearly, I interviewed students and teachers in the school. One of these interviews was with a junior named Reese Kubacke. Before we started, she told me that she does not really use TikTok and prefers other social media apps. Reese talked about how the TikTok ban would be going against our first amendment right for freedom of speech. Reese said “If TikTok is going to be taken away then shouldn't all the forms of social media too?” Another student that was interviewed had the same idea as Reese Kubacke. This student is a freshman named Maddie Wade, who said “it seems like an infringement of freedom of speech. A lot of TikToks are expressions of emotions, identity, and political views. Also if they’re going to ban TikTok for privacy, they might as well ban everything else because there's still personal info.” 

Another junior that was interviewed was Autumn Goins; she had a completely different perspective than Maddie and Reese. Autumn was talking about how TikTok should not be banned, saying “People should fight against the TikTok ban”. She also said that she likes that the things she reacts with come up on her feed and help her to get what she wants to see. The third junior that I interviewed was Joey Nicoletti, who talked about how he can see both sides on how people want it to be banned and also why people want to keep it. Joey stated “TikTok is going to get banned because the house of representatives are a bunch of boomers” and he also said “they can’t relate to gen Z”. He also commented on the way they spoke about the app saying “they didn't know any information on the topic and how the app generally works”

Another student that was interviewed was a freshman named Sophia Beyerle. She talked about how she thinks the TikTok ban is stupid and how she enjoys using it in her everyday life. She said “I think it is stupid. I use it to talk to my friends and I use it to meet lots of new people .” 

The next freshman that was interviewed was Chase Campbell. He was talking about how the government is showing more care towards an app than real life issues with death among teens. He said “I think it is honestly really stupid. Most kids spend their day on TikTok rather than doing other things which isn't good, but also if TikTok gets banned that just shows they care more about an app being banned then people getting shot at school.” A statistic that proves this is “There have been 2,069 shooting incidents since 1970. There have been 684 fatalities and 1,937 injuries.” There are so many incidents that have happened and no changes have happened. Many 9th graders had the same thought processes. 

When student Reily Bercegay was interviewed she said “I don't think the reasoning for banning TikTok is good enough, because why are we so scared of china stealing our information? Literally the main users of TikTok are teenagers, and they're not posting top secret files or anything. It's just stupid when there's bigger topics like gun violence that we could be focusing on.” Another student named Elaina Collazo agrees, saying “I just sighed and rolled my eyes because it's annoying how old people who work in the senate think that TikTok is the problem with our society when guns have been the biggest cause of school shootings and the biggest tragedies of the modern era.” Jael Brown, another School Lane student said “They do this every year and it's the same situation that they do. And I don't know why they are so worried that TikTok is going to ‘get banned’ when there are more important things that we need to worry about. “ Student Victoria Linnik also said “I think it’s stupid. There are bigger problems. There are kids getting shot in school and people losing their jobs due to the economy. Instead of banning TikTok for security reasons, teach people to stay safe on the internet.”