March 13, 2020. The day that most of the free world halted in its tracks to save as many as possible with the rapid spread of a newly discovered disease, COVID-19. The day is as clear as ever in my own mind, where I remember hearing my friends talk about a two-week vacation that we were getting over a random new disease that was essentially a slight cough. We all know where this story goes from there, but one thing that many had not realized would soon explode in popularity—TikTok trends.
Since its inception in late 2016, TikTok has been a regular social media platform that has valued short, eye-catching videos. However, considering the fact that almost the entire globe was forced to stay indoors and the growing need to satisfy the boredom that teenagers swiftly acquire when not fed funny videos, TikTok was immediately picked up by so many different content creators. For example, the D’amelio family, Bella Poarch, and Addison Rae. Impressively, during just the first quarter of 2020, TikTok was able to amass over 315 million downloads, a historic achievement that still stands today.
Now, with context out of the way, the reason behind this article’s creation is the “ban” on TikTok as a whole, passed by the United States Senate. The Senate cannot realistically pass any sort of legislation that would take the app off the national market. However, instead of committing a clear violation of American citizen’s constitutional rights, the government has instead created a bill that would…create a ban on the public’s right to freedom of speech. Although the Senate and President Biden raised some very good arguments against the use of TikTok. For instance, concerns over the fact that the most popular social media site available in the United States is being owned, managed, and governed by one the biggest rival nations to the U.S., the People’s Republic of China. To those with geopolitical knowledge between the two, it is a common theme that either country wants to hold more power over the other in any way possible. This rivalry is the leading concern over TikTok, as many politicians representing the United States have found it very plausible that the algorithms used by the platform could be subconsciously feeding anti-patriot/pro-communist propaganda to the impressionable audience that are teenagers. On the other hand, TikTok has continuously denounced these claims, arguing the value of protection against any third-party data collectors with precise attention to detail within their cybersecurity. Although there are a wide variety of different factors that have led America’s greatest minds to fear the growing platform, an equal amount of evidence was presented during the initial trial against TikTok (find the entire trial in the hyperlink) to support TikTok’s claims of protecting their customer’s information. This concept of attempting to create an actual law that would prohibit the public’s right to use any app they see fit is an interesting idea on paper; however, as many other news publications have pointed out, enforcing this sort of legislation would be very hard.