For over four years the United States government has threatened to ban the popular video content app, TikTok. Now in 2025, this threat is closer to reality than ever before.
“I know that it was rumored a bunch of times, but then it was never final, but now I feel it’s final,” junior Kyla Styles said.
In March 2024, a bill was written to force the Chinese company, DanceByte, who owns TikTok to sell the app to a U.S. business. This bill, popularly known as the ban-or-sell bill, found its way through Congress, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and finally President Joe Biden. Each part of the White House agreed to ban or force ByteDance to sell the app.
“The TikTok ban is occurring on Jan. 19, 2025 and is being banned due to the United States government feeling threatened that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company known as ByteDance,” senior AJ McElhinney said.
From federal charges over violation of child privacy laws, to conspiracy of the Chinese government collecting data, ByteDance has had many run-ins with the United States government.
“The CEO of TikTok has said multiple times that the Chinese government has nothing to do with ByteDance and that the United States data is protected behind a firewall so that the Chinese government cannot tamper with it,” McElhinney continued.
A federal TikTok ban/sale has raised more questions than “is this all true?” It has also brought up concerns about how it will affect other forms of social media.
“If they’re taking down TikTok, what’s next? Who knows?” junior AJ Parseghian asked.
With the potential removal of the app, students voiced they see a spotlight on other social media platforms to fill the void that is to come.
“I don’t think it’s going to change anything. I think it might just move to a different app, like Instagram where people are just going to do the exact same thing but just on there instead,” Styles said.
In agreement with Styles, freshman Sean McGinnis stated, “People will move to Instagram and Instagram will make a lot of money.”
Other students voiced this may become a new era for social media competition.
“TikTok has seen waves through other social media apps that have used the scrolling feature. You have YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and really any other social media app has that feature. So I feel like if TikTok does get banned other apps will feel the stress and they’ll try to push themselves to the top,” McElhinney said.
