President Joe Biden signed legislation that could result in Tiktok’s ban across the United States if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, refuses to sell the app as lawmakers acted on concerns that the company’s ownership poses a national security threat.
While a similar bill faced legislators last month, this bill is attached to a broader spending package that would send $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. Additionally, this version of the bill appeases some past concerns of the Senate by extending the six month deadline for TikTok to find a new owner to nine months, with a possible 3 month extension.
Although the bill was signed into law, there is no need for students to panic yet–the bill is already facing several First Amendment related lawsuits.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese-based company, ByteDance, and in recent years, concerns have risen over ByteDance’s connection with the Chinese government. In particular, government officials have warned that China could be collecting data from devices, or trying to influence people and especially American politics through the app.
In December 2022, TikTok was banned on government phones. In March 2023, Congress questioned the CEO of TikTok, Zi Chew, who defended the social media platform and claimed it was not connected to the Chinese government. In May 2023, Montana passed legislation to ban TikTok in the state, but the ban was blocked by a federal judge before it took effect.
The bill was initially passed by the House on March 13th, and it was then packaged into a bill that also contained foreign aid. The Senate passed this bill on April 23rd, and it was signed by Biden on April 24th.
If the company doesn’t divest from the app, TikTok could potentially be banned in the US. This would affect over 130 million people who use TikTok regularly.Many teenagers, in particular, are notorious for spending a lot of time on the app.
To get the opinions of Paschal students, we made an anonymous survey with questions related to their own TikTok usage, and what they would do if it was banned.
78 percent of students who answered the survey reported that they use TikTok. Many suggested that if it was banned, they would use instagram reels, youtube, snapchat, or a new app instead.
Though many students admitted they didn’t know very much about the issue, many, predictably, were opposed to a ban. Some didn’t think TikTok was stealing their data, while others believed that there are bigger problems for the country to worry about.
“It hasn’t harmed anyone, and doesn’t truly affect anyone’s day to day life in a truly worse outlook,” one student wrote. “You can make the argument that it ruins the attention span of others and closes them from reality but, so does every other app?”
Some, however, were more worried about whether it could be a national security issue, or had other concerns about the platform.
“Honestly I think it should be banned for the ridiculous amount of misinformation spreading on it,” another student wrote. “I don’t know how much stealing data will really hurt people, but the misinformation and idiotic trends are causing people, especially younger people, to make really, really stupid decisions.”
“If the government can prove that Tiktok really threatens our security,” one person responded, “then I think it would be reasonable to ban it.”
