The U.S. government passed a bill to ban the popular social media app TikTok in late April. In response, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is suing them and calling the ban unconstitutional. TikTok is often used by RCMS students, so this could impact many people.
“I think [the ban is] not likely to happen; there’s just too much of a following in the U.S.,” said Aiyana Bage, an eighth-grader on the Wolves team.
TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to create and interact with short videos. The average video length is around 50 seconds, and viewers can scroll past several videos quickly if they’re not interested. According to the Pew Research Center, TikTok is one of the most popular apps among teenagers.
“When I get back from school, I open [TikTok] up while eating a snack of some sort, and then I don’t look at it for the rest of the day,” Aiyana said.
Silvia Metcalf, a seventh-grader on the All-Stars team, believes that TikTok can be dangerous to students and lower their attention spans.
“TikTok has been destructive in and out of school,” Silvia said. “There’s this one TikTok challenge called the Angel of Death that was somebody jumping in front of a bus.”
TikTok doesn’t just affect students, though. There are over one million TikTok creators who use the site regularly to generate income, so if TikTok is banned, they could lose their jobs.
“People make livings off of TikTok, not YouTube Shorts unless they already have a YouTube channel,” said a seventh-grader who goes by the alias Alora Channing.
If TikTok is banned, current users may switch to other social media sites. TikTok’s competitors could also try to seize the opportunity and replace the site.
“YouTube Shorts is already there. So is Instagram Reels,” Alora said, “or they’ll come up with something new like what happened with Musical.ly and Vine.”
Vine was a similar site that lost popularity due to a shutdown in 2017. A TikTok ban would function differently because the ban only effects the United States, so the app would still be available around the world.
“I believe that TikTok plays a monopoly on other social media sites in terms of short term content,” Aiyana said. “Removing TikTok would be a pretty impactful thing.”
At this point, it’s unclear whether TikTok will remain the most-downloaded app in the US or fade into obscurity due to a ban.
“There’s a lot of young people that use TikTok,” Silvia said, “so it can go either way.”
