I Don’t Like TikTok, But We Really Need It
With the possibility of a TikTok ban on the horizon, I have some thoughts.
I would consider myself to be anti-TikTok. As a Zoomer, I am definitely in the minority among my age range. It’s not because I hate silly internet content— in fact, it’s quite the opposite. My adolescence coincided with the lifespan of Vine, TikTok’s spiritual precursor, and I can’t tell you how many hours I spent rotting my brain on that godforsaken app–– lying facedown on my bed, scrolling through 6-second videos and repeating its viral memes like “Road work ahead?” to my friends at school ad nauseum.
The time I wasted on Vine became a problem for me, so much so that once it was shut down in 2017, I vowed that I would not succumb any longer once a new app inevitably came to take its place. Once TikTok came into prominence in 2018, and millions of people around the globe–– primarily Zoomers and Gen Alpha–– flocked in droves to this digital mecca of perpetual content, I took a vehement contrarian stance to this paramount of the zeitgeist. And sure, I may be a bit late to the party on some cultural trends here and there, but I’d say my gamble was worth the risk, judging by the drastic improvement in my time management skills.
Nonetheless, I cannot disagree more with the asinine thought process behind the United States’ Congress bill to ban TikTok that was passed in the House on March 13. The SAFETY on Social Media Act, introduced by the infamously inflammatory Republican representative from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, proposes a complete ban on TikTok and otherwise “untrustworthy” social media platforms in a misguided effort to safeguard Americans’ data privacy. The only way TikTok will be accessible to Americans is if ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, completely divests from the platform.
“TikTok captures vast amounts of private information on users—including American citizens—and provides the Chinese Communist Party with access to that information,” Cotton said. “TikTok also allows the Chinese Communist Party to manipulate the content Americans see. This bill will eliminate the threat TikTok and apps like it pose to Americans’ private information.”
Beyond the grossly prejudiced anti-Asian rhetoric to unpack here, which echoes Red Scare-era xenophobic panic, this decision is short-sighted and misinformed. Not only is TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean who is in no way affiliated with the CCP (the congressional hearing where Chew is interrogated publicly about his allegiances is just embarrassing to witness), but there is no evidence supporting the claims that user data collected by TikTok has been shared with the Chinese government.
Yet, the bipartisan decision to pass this bill in the House demonstrates no room for compromise. Here’s the problem with that: If this bill is passed in the Senate and signed into law, it’s only going to be a matter of time before another social media platform copies the TikTok formula and usurps its role.
We’ve already seen it with some of the other popular social media sites, with Instagram’s “Reels” and YouTube’s “Shorts” shamelessly mimicking TikTok’s structure in their yearning for user engagement. They aren’t as successful as TikTok, and they won’t be if TikTok stays around.
TikTok has that personal, quirky quality that makes it appeal to its hundreds of millions of users around the globe–– the ability to see the faces and personalities of other users on the app gives it an intimate feel that has yet to be replicated. Other copycat apps just don’t have that aspect to them. They feel too corporate, too manufactured to have any true sense of personal connection to them.
And the thing about TikTok is, at this point, it’s too integrated into the collective consciousness of Americans. Roughly 170 million Americans use the app. And not only do people use it for entertainment, but they use it as an alternative to Google to find things to do in their area, check out restaurants to patronize or stay up to date on what is happening in the world. They use it to find communities they are interested in and connect with other like-minded people around the globe.
How else will you share a niche meme with your friend these days if you aren’t texting them a TikTok link? Through Twitter (or, ugh, X)? Hell no. Because of its immense popularity and saturation of users, there’s no better place on the internet to find whatever you are looking for.
If the U.S. government is so concerned about its citizens’ data privacy and social media consumption, why not cast a more discerning glare at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire, which has been proven on several occasions to act irresponsibly with users’ private information?
Or what about Elon Musk’s abysmal management of what used to be (and should still be) Twitter? Musk promised to eliminate bot accounts and create a platform for “free speech,” but I can say with confidence that I have seen more bot accounts posting porn and racist conspiracy theories now than I ever did before Musk took over the platform. If proving the dead-internet theory right was Musk’s secret goal in acquiring Twitter, he has succeeded with flying colors.
But is the government so concerned about TikTok because ByteDance is a Chinese company, and we as Americans aren’t supposed to like China? Don’t get me wrong, we should absolutely keep an eye on them, but the way in which we do so shouldn’t be rooted in xenophobia and fearmongering.
Maybe because it’s an election year, and in anticipation of the Geriatric Bowl rematch between ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden and Donald ‘Let’s nuke a hurricane’ Trump this November, the idea of influencing younger Americans’ mass media consumption is causing lawmakers to lick their lips. Florida already made headway in this regard when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into effect HB 3, prohibiting children under the age of 14 from holding social media accounts and requiring parental consent for 14 and 15-year-olds. I don’t necessarily disagree with this law, as I do think underage social media use should be monitored more, but it marks a stark change in the say that the government has over citizens’ social media usage.
With an entity like TikTok in the mix, the government’s influence goes only so far. And maybe that’s how it should be. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of the press, and what press is freer than from the people themselves? Americans pride themselves on living in a free country, so why should they not have the freedom to spend innumerable hours watching dumb videos sometimes? I might personally refrain from being on TikTok, but it’s our right to be able to waste our time being unproductive on our phones–– we are Americans, dammit!