On March 13, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that will effectively ban TikTok in the US if its parent company, ByteDance, refuses to sell it.
Though this bill hasn’t been passed through the Senate, it has created mass hysteria across all platforms, and further discourse about TikTok and its impact on our generation.
In the past six years, TikTok went from an app saturated with sped up lip-syncing and ‘transitions,’ to one with political discourse, dances, makeup tutorials, sports clips, comedy, and an incredible ability to promote music.
According to The Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are three main reasons that TikTok is being targeted by lawmakers: “The first is that TikTok is part of a nefarious Chinese government influence operation designed to sway U.S. politics. The second is that TikTok can be used to collect personal data on Americans. The third is that voluntarily downloading TikTok onto phones or devices allows for the injection of malicious software by China.”
The article goes on to explain that this bill isn’t an effective approach to protect Americans from downloading harmful software, and that it might even find obstacles in the First Amendment, addressing concerns of the ban limiting free speech.
While taking a critical lens towards social media and its adverse effects and risks, TikTok is not our most pressing threat on national security. Guns are.
In 2023, America faced a record-breaking 630 mass shootings. That is an average of almost two mass shootings a day.
So far, in 2024, the Gun Violence Archive has counted 86 mass shootings in the US (at the time of writing this article).
Last year, the US experienced nearly 350 "school shooting incidents."
Students live in danger.
Congress: Focus your efforts on an assault rifle ban instead of a Tiktok one.