After a short lived shut down, TikTok is once again accessible to United States users. It is still unclear whether the app’s restoration is permanent, but its roughly 12-hour shutdown, and the days leading up to it, have many to contemplating what a life without TikTok would look like.
Imani Thomas, a senior at Fresno State, said TikTok has brought people together and how the ban could potentially diminish it.
“TikTok has united all of us to have an active commentary and conversation,” Thomas said. “This platform that has been allowing people to have these open conversations is being taken away because it is from a foreign adversary…it’s just another way for the government to try to have power over what we see and what we do.”
In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed a bill that gave ByteDance, the platform’s China-based parent company, until Jan. 19 to sell its U.S. holdings.
At which point Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store were supposed to stop offering updates for TikTok, making the app slowly become unusable, according to court documents.
Instead, TikTok issued a statement via X that stated the app would go completely dark in the U.S. until the American government was willing to negotiate further.
Not everyone in the senate was in favor of a ban, however.
Senator Ed Markey said the app offered the opportunity to cultivate unique communities and bolster economy in a way that can’t be done elsewhere.
“These [communities] cannot be replicated on another app,” Markey said in a Jan. 13 announcement to the Senate. “Creators and small businesses cannot rebuild their audiences overnight and many have stated that thanks to TikTok’s unique culture, it is impossible to develop a similar following on another platform.”
Ivanna Gomez, a sophomore at Fresno State, shares similar economic concerns.
“I don’t think it’s a good decision at all because it limits freedom of speech, but also, a lot of people monetize it,” Gomez said. “So if it’s taken away, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs because they depend on TikTok.”
While the U.S. government aims to ban TikTok due to national security threats, some Fresno State students share how they believe it is a hindrance to the freedom of speech and expression.
“I feel like it’s the early stages of fascism because that’s how it starts,” said Jocelyn Morales Reynoso, a senior at Fresno State. “They take away bits and parts of expression and they limit your right of speech. TikTok was the thing that truly banded all of Gen Z to interact with each other.”
Morales Reynoso said that she thinks the potential ban is useless.
“I think it’s absolutely dumb, it’s completely stupid,” Morales Reynoso said.
Other students, like Joseph Igot, a junior at Fresno State, feel more indifferent toward the ban.
“I have no opinion,” Igot said. “I have never used TikTok, so I [could] care less about things.”
However, the app has become so prominent that it’s even been used in local classrooms.
“It’s not just for goofy videos, it’s for storytelling,” said Fresno State Media, Communications and Journalism professor Cheryl Gardner. “And so we’re going to do storytelling in a different way. And we’re media, we adapt, we adapt to whatever we have to work with.”
Gardner incorporates different social media platforms in her classrooms and is a faculty advisor with the department’s social media team.
She also has plans for a more social media specific class.
“The class I have proposed for our department, which is under review right now, is social media journalism,” Gardner said. “So we’ll be taking all of the ethics, all of the skill production and writing that we are learning now. How do we take that and how do we present content on the different platforms, including Tiktok? Sometimes it’s more challenging to write for a shorter, smaller story, more strategic, more focused, than it is to write a long format.”
While she recognizes educational benefits to TikTok, Gardner says the app’s erasure would only make space for another one like it to take its place.
“We’ve seen the rise of Tiktok, how popular it is,” Gardner said. “So what has happened on the other platforms? We have reels. We have stories. Reels have taken off on Instagram, even Facebook has gotten into it. YouTube, pretty much every site has some sort of video because of what Tiktok has done.”
Some students like Kaia Walls said a TikTok ban wouldn’t bring about any catastrophic changes.
“For a TikTok ban I understand why they are doing it and personally, it doesn’t affect me that much at all,” Walls said. “I only go on TikTok if I want something different from YouTube or Instagram but I use those a lot more than TikTok.”
Despite this, Walls still sees how too much TikTok can be a bad thing.
“I am a procrastinator when it comes to doing classwork, and sometimes I just open TikTok to just scroll over dumb stuff or ‘brain rot’ instead of doing my work,” Walls said. “It’s bad because I’m wasting time I could be using to do my classwork.”
Many agree that the app has its pros and cons. Some, like California State University, Fullerton student life and leadership marketing team member Jessica Cargin, can attest to the usage of social media as a tool both professionally and in education.
“Recently, I’ve seen a shift with a lot of businesses,” Cargin said. “Instagram became a priority over TikTok. I think it’s just because of the way that Instagram’s adapted with reels and meta business suite itself allows for businesses to better create content, schedule content and like, look at those insights than TikTok does.”
As more and more of today’s youth begin to utilize social media, providing education that can help them navigate it is important.
“I’m very big [on] the push for media literacy, starting young, so children know how to understand what the media is telling them, and being able to say this is real, this isn’t real,” Cargin said. “Whether that’s in schools, having programs like this is how you navigate an online website, this is how you understand what you’re being shown at a young age. Whether that be first grade, and then once you’re in junior high, that’s maybe what you get on those apps.”
Cargin also sees the need for a middle ground.
“I think to just say no contact, no information with social media until you’re in junior high is just as bad as starting you off at seven years old,” she said.
With the uncertainty of TikTok many people are moving toward alternative apps that have some reminiscence of TikTok.
Alvaro Cortez, a sophomore at Fresno State, revealed what he thinks the new top platform will be.
“I think Instagram Reels or RedNote will be the alternative,” Cortez said.
According to an article from the New York Times, RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, is a social media app that is mainly used in China. It was the most downloaded app following confirmations of a TikTok ban.
“The ban is backfiring because now, people are going to social media apps that are run by foreign adversaries,” Thomas said.
U.S. users returning to the app are now met with a message thanking President-elect Donald Trump for his help in making TikTok’s return possible.
While Trump has yet to take office, he had already promised to issue an executive order on his first day in an effort to keep the app available in the U.S.
Today may have been a triumph for TikTok and its users, but its future in America remains unclear as this gripping saga continues to unfold.
Correction: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Cargin’s name and clarify her title and the name of meta business suite.
Jill • Jan 19, 2025 at 9:48 pm
Well done!