On Sunday, January 19, 2025, the social media app Tiktok will officially be banned in the United States. The app originally started as Musical.ly in 2014, but was merged with TikTok on August 2, 2018. Tiktok as an app was a big hit, ending up with 1.6 billion active users.
Tiktok has been a large platform that allows people to learn new dances, recipes, books to read, places to travel, and much more. It has given people jobs and allows small businesses to gain more clients. It also gives ideas on how to do many things, which inspires all Segerstrom students.
“We actually use Tiktok to get ideas for our lunch time activities and themes for our school dances,” said senior Terrence Ross, ASB athletic commissioner.
The main reason for the ban was to ensure the safety of the American people. The company that owns Tiktok is ByteDance LTD, a Chinese company. Our government was worried about how the data that is being gathered through Tiktok will end up being sold in the country of China. So, the ban of the social media app was brought up to Congress. It was passed through the House, Senate, and the President. Students at Segerstrom, like freshman Olive Banuelos-Bill, disagree with the ban.
“I don’t understand why they don’t think about our safety when our data could be being sold from American companies,” said Banuelos-Bill.
The CEO and the lawyers of TikTok were trying to fight to not allow the ban to go through in the trial court, but the judge thought banning the app would be the better option. The lawyers then decided to appeal and bring the case to the appellate court. The courts then decided to continue with the banning of TikTok unless they sold TikTok to an American company. However, the CEO of TikTok didn’t want to sell the app. This decision from the CEO wasn’t made soon enough, so it forced the lawyers to submit an emergency appeal towards the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, like all of the other courts, wanted the ban to continue. The CEO announced that on the day of the ban, Tiktok will shut down altogether. But, Donald Trump announced that he will try to save TikTok so that the Biden administration will not enforce the ban until Trump comes into office and decides what he wants to do with the app. Once January 18, 2025, came around, people were very depressed because it was their last day with TikTok. Around 8pm, the notification that people in the United States aren’t allowed to use the app was enforced. The app wasn’t able to be used throughout the whole night, until around midday on the 19th when Tiktok was back, but not available in the app store. So, unless Trump finds a way to overrule the ban, people will be able to have TikTok, but won’t be able to update it. From not being able to update the app, it will slowly stop working until it’s so outdated that people aren’t able to use the app at all.
“Honestly, I am glad we got TikTok back because the crash out was going crazy,” said junior Juliette Sanchez.