TikTok, the popular social media app, was officially made unavailable for users in the United States on Jan. 18 following a ruling by the Supreme Court. This comes due to concerns that the app could steal user data, which could be harmful if sold to the Chinese government.
On Jan. 10, SCOTUS ruled that the app’s owner, ByteDance, would have to sell its American operations or be banned.
Users logging in are faced with a message which reads: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
TikTok rose in popularity in 2018 as its algorithm allowed videos to easily go viral. Its dances and lip-synching videos have made it one of the most popular social media sites with over 4.9 billion downloads worldwide.
Juliana Murguz ’25, who ran the TikTok account for Riordan’s Armor Robotics team, said, “I think we’ve definitely found our audience and I would be sad to see it leave because we’ve sort of made a community on TikTok.”
Fiona Mulderrig ’25, who used TikTok “pretty much every day,” said, “I can understand the reasons behind it like the security risk of it, but I don’t understand why we can’t just make the app safer rather than just deleting it entirely.”
She added, “Over the pandemic, [TikTok was] how I connected with people, because, like, I couldn’t see the movie in person, but we would send videos back and forth…we would make videos together, virtually.”
President-elect Donald Trump has considered implementing an extension of 90 days for TikTok.
In an interview with NBC News, he said, “The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate.”
This has come to a shock to many as Trump previously stated that he was in favor of banning the app in July of 2020.
Many users migrated to another Chinese-owned app called RedNote in the week leading up to the ban. Language learning app Duolingo announced that it has seen a 216 percent increase in Mandarin lessons as users attempt to better navigate the new app.