On the evening of Saturday, Jan. 18, American users of the popular social media app TikTok found that they had lost access to it as it was banned in the United States. However, the next morning, the ban was lifted, accompanied by a message which read, “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back  in the U.S.!”

This final detail gained some scrutiny since Trump was the first to begin talk of banning the social media app in July of 2020, nor was he in office at the time the ban was lifted.

Diego Gomez ’25 said, “[TikTok] got reinstated before he was president. He did not do that stuff.”

Trump first raised concerns over the app selling user information to the Chinese government.

Still, Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office delaying the ban for 75 days, according to Forbes. This means that the app’s owner, ByteDance, has until April 5 to sell.

Kat Belfor ’27, who has been on TikTok since 2020, said, “I think that was smart because that gets a lot of the young people on his side.”

Despite the ban being lifted, the app was unavailable on the app store until Feb. 13. Many people, including Belfor, deleted TikTok when the ban went into effect, and couldn’t download it for a few weeks.

Several internet personalities and billionaires have spoken publicly about buying the app to save it in the United States but nothing is official yet.

YouTuber Mr. Beast posted a video on Instagram in which he said “TikTok we mean business” after claiming to have gotten out of a meeting with several billionaires.

Thoughts on the ban varied over concerns of national security, attention spans, and freedom of speech.

Belfor gave the opinion, “I think that the ban has affected a lot of people negatively because of the community that [TikTok] created, but also I think that fast form content is genuinely unhealthy for developing minds.”

Users are eagerly awaiting to see how the future of one of the largest social media apps in recent years will play out. Will TikTok stay put or will it leave again?