The Supreme Court is likely upholding a law to ban the social media platform in the United States, which has caused many opinions and conversation between users. TikTok, a global based media app that contains over one billion users, is one of the highest-used apps from this decade, with over 170 million users in the United States alone, and it is currently ranked number three in the top charts for the entertainment category in the App Store.
The Supreme Court’s decision relies on ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based owner, to sell off the application by January 19, 2025. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled ApplicationsAct (PAFACA) was signed into law by President Biden in April 2024. The act grants the government the authority to ban apps that are owned from a foreign area, as they are considered a threat to national security.
Although, when the users received a 14 hour ban of the app, it had quickly spread around and users looked for alternative applications that would sufficiently assist with their needs. As President Trump officially was named the President of the United States and was in office on January 20 2025, he signed an executive order to suspend the ban for 75 days until a buyer can purchase the app.
The United States has a worry between Chinese officials handling personal information about US users that could be used for intelligence options or the spreading of disinformation. But high school students don’t usually focus on the issue of private knowledge being spread; the student focus was on their daily use app going out and having to rely on something else for their everyday questions and curiosity.
If the ban goes through eventually, the users will not fully get a disappearance of the app from their device, but it will slowly crash as time goes by since updates and further downloads will not be accessible.
Many TikTok users have different reactions to the discussion of the ban, and some are very anxious on what will happen next.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer advocated an extension of the ban on Thursday, January 16, 2025, which is allowing the anxious users to take a sigh of relief with this ban.
A majority of the users on TikTok range from 18-24 years old, and it has become a daily used app for recipes, dances, shopping, and much more. But in spite of that, most high schoolers are deeply dependent on TikTok as their resource for any questions or necessary needs in their everyday lives.
Students at John F Kennedy are common users of TikTok, and everyone has different opinions about the ban.
“I believe a better solution for this issue wouldn’t be to ban it completely, but a limit to how much people can use the app,” said Byanca Aleman, a Kennedy junior and TikTok user. “I don’t believe that it is necessarily the content of it, because it’s rarely providing misleading content depending on what you like and watch, but I think it’s formerly used on how much time people spend on it.”
According to the Next Gen Personal Finance statistics, most users, specifically high schoolers and young adults, spend about 95 minutes on TikTok per day, which their feed can become more of their interest as they view and like more content in their preference, causing more endless scrolling.
“Sometimes I do feel guilty when I spend most of my time watching things on TikTok that don’t necessarily benefit me rather than utilizing my time doing something more important with my time,” said Aleman.
But, some other students aren’t too worried about the ban becoming a reality. “I think it’s good for people, especially students, to take a break off of social media for a while and to just enjoy their time that they have,” said Danny Espinoza, Kennedy junior and TikTok user.
“My friends and I like to talk and be present in conversations, without our phones and we’ve had a tremendous positive impact on our time together,” said Espinoza. “Students can devote their time for personal beneficial habits for themselves and they can get a lot done in that small time”.
Although the ban is still up for discussion, TikTok content creators are figuring out other alternative applications to use if the ban does go through. Options like Lemon8, Neptune, and Rednote are possible apps up for discussion to “replace” TikTok if it gets banned.
“I love to make TikToks with my friends, to not just post but to save for reminiscing about good times with them,” said Aleman. “It also gives good life hacks and daily tips I didn’t know about, which is much easier than watching a long Youtube video about it.”
TikTok has been a very popular and loved app since it was called “Musical.ly” and changed its name to TikTok in August, 2018. Content creators, shop-owners, and users are anxious on what will become the next app to post and sell things on. There are many mixed feelings about the ban and whether or not it will become a reality, or be forgotten about.
