The House of Representatives passed a bill on March 13 requiring TikTok to either divest from Bytedance, an internet company based in China or face a nationwide ban, according to a March 12 article from The Washington Post.
The bill gave the company six months to find a new buyer or face a potential ban. This isn’t the first time TikTok has faced a potential ban. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether it gets banned because we are probably all better off without it.
While I agree that banning TikTok would violate our First Amendment rights, we only stand to grow as a society if the bill passes.
Most people who use the app find themselves half awake at night mindlessly scrolling through 30-second videos and don’t even realize the hours pass by.
I have been guilty of staying up and scrolling through TikTok, and wondering why I’m so tired the next morning.
Ever since the app exploded in popularity, our attention has completely decreased. Most people can only take news via a short video and can barely even get through reading a whole article.
It is not just news either. TikTok seems to have become the norm as opposed to getting through a television episode or a movie. Now we have the option of watching a two-hour film over the span of 30 second increments.
TikTok also has the potential to play with your emotions by making through a swirl of different emotions in the span of five minutes. By the time you know it you can find yourself emotionally drained.
The National Library of Medicine did a study on 3,036 students who actively used TikTok and the results showed a partial mediation of depression, anxiety and stress. The same article also stated that an estimated 1.5 billion people actively use TikTok.
Not to mention if TikTok were to be banned we still have a plethora of other options to turn to, such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
Many people receive news from TikTok that other platforms fail to report on, but never decide to do their own research past what they saw on the app.
If you really receive news on TikTok there is still the option of either turning on the news or reading an article.
Some people argue news articles and news channels never have any sources, but the same people who check on TikTok for news never bother to fact-check certain videos they watch.
Conspiracy theorists have claimed that China is using TikTok as a way to track and monitor United States citizens but I hate to break it to you, we are all probably being monitored either way.
Lawmakers have not offered any evidence of the Chinese Communist Party using TikToks as a weapon against American interests according to NPR.
The only downside of the potential ban of TikTok is the social media influencers who are actually making a living out of the app.
There is a small number of people who have actually found economic success through making short videos for TikTok. There are other social apps that are just as well known that people can profit from.
TikTok does not only hurt the active adults who are using the app, but kids stand to see negative effects of TikTok, especially those who start consuming social media from a very young age.
TikTok has dethroned Instagram as the most used social media app among kids 12 to 17 years old, with 63 % of them using the app on a daily basis, according to Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
Messing with the attention span of adults is one thing, but when it comes to kids it's hard to actually get them to focus once they’ve picked up a habit they’ve been used to their whole life.
It goes from scrolling through TikToks in the classroom to scrolling through TikToks while you're bored at work.
Just scrolling is something that seems so innocent but it's affecting our everyday routines and how we go about interacting with one another. Instead of asking someone if you saw a piece of news, you would ask if they saw the TikTok.
Obviously, parents who don't keep track of social media usage among their children are more than likely to blame for the recent surge in usage in TikTok. Now the next generation is already receiving their news and entertainment in 30-second montages before moving on to the next video.
TikTok, just like any other company, is designed to make you keep coming back and make you hopelessly addicted.
Companies and influencers compete with one another for our undivided attention, and we keep falling for it.
That goes for all companies who have adopted this strategy. TikTok just happens to be the application that’s facing the ban.
If you really want to watch a show or a movie, maybe watch the whole thing and if you really want to be informed on news that doesn’t get mainstream attention maybe it's time to read a newspaper.
