If one of your 2025 New Year’s resolutions was to decrease your screen time, the potential TikTok ban in the United States may just be the solution for you. Let’s dig into how we ended up here and what might come next.
Since its start in 2017, TikTok has been a frequent subject in American news and government policy. TikTok has been investigated several times and fined for violating US child privacy laws. Further, the app has been accused of censoring content that is contrary to Chinese government policy and failing to moderate misleading American political content or sensitive topics such as eating disorders (AP News).
The US, along with many other countries, has grown increasingly worried about the national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s potential to influence TikTok to hand over data collected from its extensive user base. In 2019, the Pentagon banned TikTok from all government phones and, since then, the UK Parliament and the European Commission have followed suit. Further, India banned the app in 2020 (BBC News).
The official legal battle to ban TikTok in the US started in 2020; all American companies were instructed not to transact with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company; and ByteDance was told to divest from TikTok operations in the US (AP News). However, with the change in administrations after the 2020 election, these policies were not acted upon and TikTok continued to grow. That is, until March 2024.
Concerns over data privacy had continued to grow over the four years, leading Congress to craft a ban-or-sell bill. Signed into law by President Biden in April, TikTok was given a deadline, January 19, by which they either had to sell TikTok or they would be banned in the United States (AP News).
TikTok officially went quiet in the US from Saturday night to Sunday morning. Instead, users saw a message explaining why American users could not use the app. The message also specifically called out that Trump would reinstate the app after his inauguration. However, the app returned to normal function Sunday morning after Trump made public promises not to uphold the ban during his term. This is a dramatic change in stance on this issue after the Trump administration started this legal battle in 2020.
TikTok remained unavailable for download on American app stores even as the app resumed. This means that the ban has not been lifted yet, contrary to what messaging may imply. No new users can join and in-app purchases have ground to a halt (NPR). It is likely that TikTok will be granted an extension to find an American buyer. Rumors have been flying over the past few weeks about different buyers; there has been talk about everyone, from Meta to Mr. Beast, but no theory has been corroborated yet (USA Today). So, this is a temporary solution and a permanent one will fall to the next administration to be found.
TikTok is a social network-based app, meaning users only get value out of it if many other users are on the app too; so as soon as people start “jumping ship” or being unable to use the app, its usability tanks for everyone. TikTok users have been moving to other social media apps at high speeds. We saw expected behavior, as creators and consumers migrated to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. But in a bit of a twist, half a million users have moved to RedNote, another popular social media app in China, as “TikTok Refugees” (Reuters).
For all of its controversy (and high contributions to my screen time), TikTok created a unique community online. The speed with which people were willing to jump on RedNote shows just how strong a hold TikTok and its content have on our lives and culture.
If the TikTok battle can teach us anything, it is that as HCI practitioners, our work does not exist in a vacuum. Politics is just one of the many factors of human behavior that we have to take into account in our work. Even the best designs are subject to everything else that is happening in the world. So what can we do? We can continue to design great products that address real needs and we can stay part of important conversations like these.