Lawrentians React to TikTok Ban

“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” read the screen presented to  TikTok’s American users around 10:35 P.M.  EST on Saturday, January 18. The change arrived shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling to enforce a bipartisan law, passed by former U.S. President Joe Biden, requiring TikTok’s owner ByteDance to sell the app to American buyers by January 19 or face a country-wide ban.

Yet, the ban was short-lived; merely a few hours later, the app flickered back to life in the U.S. after current President Donald Trump announced on January 19 that he would issue an executive order to stall the  federal ban. According to Trump, the stall will likely span 90 days, and he has confirmed that he plans to use the 90-day buffer to seek a 50-50 venture between ByteDance and a new American owner. Trump’s stall has the capacity to serve as a personal political victory, particularly amongst American youth as it will largely appease this demographic. However, Trump has not always been a TikTok supporter: during his first term in the Oval Office in 2020, he voiced approval to ban the app. 

“I found it strange how Trump claimed to have completely flipped on the issue… [Trump’s stalling of the ban] felt like a weird coercive political tactic, and I’m not sure how I feel about using the app again,” Mira Ponnambalam ’26, a TikTok user since 8th grade, commented.

Regardless, restoration of TikTok was welcome news for the app’s estimated 120 million American users, including more than 26 million teens aged 13 to 17, who use the app as a source of information, entertainment, and content production.

“When I first heard about the ban, I was very upset,” Isabella Danker ’26 explained. According to Danker, TikTok allows her to “relax,” and she enjoys both watching videos  and making her own. 

Similarly, TikTok user Kaian Shi ’28 called TikTok a “good community in general,” expressing her indifference to the concerns voiced by the U.S. legislature. 

The calls by prominent lawmakers and judges to ban TikTok have been ongoing for about four years due to the alleged national security risks posed by the app’s ties to China, such as the exposure of users to Chinese-biased algorithms. U.S. lawmaker Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-C.T.) expressed concerns regarding misinformation and censorship, calling TikTok a “gun aimed at Americans’ heads.” In 2023, concerns over TikTok blew up on social media when TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress, addressing allegations of data misuse and national security risks. Chew emphasized the company’s efforts to store U.S. data on domestic servers through the Project Texas initiative with Oracle. Still, several US states banned the use of TikTok on government phones.

“I tried to find things on the other side, and I do understand, to some extent, why it might have been a concern, but I thought the problems with the ban far outweighed the positives,” Ponnambalam added. 

Shi finds the effect of the TikTok ban “ironic,” as an influx of Tiktok creators and users have shifted to the popular Chinese app RedNote to create and consume short-form content. Since the announcement of the TikTok ban, RedNote has seen an influx of over 700,000 users.

Many students at Lawrenceville engage with TikTok positively, including Jade Zhang ’28, who views the platform not only as a way to “relax and forget about the stress of school” but also an opportunity to “learn interesting information.”

The TikTok ban has sparked debate and discourse over concerns regarding social media, and its impacts can be felt by many Lawrentians.