Once again, TikTok is at the center of hot debate The goal is the same: either the app’s Chinese owners, ByteDance, sell their shares of the company or Tiktok will be banned in America. 

At the time of publishing it is unclear to whom the U.S. is demanding that ByteDance sell to. It would seem that The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) would be most appeased if TikTok was under our control, ensuring that nobody except Americans would have access to American data through the app. But so far no evidence of foul play on China’s part has come out. 

Quite honestly, Americans lost their right to true off-grid level privacy upon the birth of social media and the advent of The Patriot Act directly after the 9/11 attacks. Keeping all that information out of other countries’ hands is another issue that most people will get behind, without even knowing if the other party is actually breaching any data.

Concerns over who has access to what are valid, but if our data is safe there is no reason for a ban. TikTok currently has about 100 million users in the U.S., equating to nearly a third of the country’s population. Of course it makes sense to worry about the safety of the app when everyone from small businesses to celebrities are using it. Not to mention that it practically controls all things new and exciting in social culture at this point and our attention spans are but helplessly-short candle wicks at its mercy.

A ban would not stop the masses from accessing their content of choice, especially when videos of cute animals are at stake. Or helpful culinary hacks, or jewelry makers or baby bison living on ranches. TikTok has become a mirror of America’s favorite things and people are not going to easily agree to letting it go. It would not be a simple process, given that downloading services would have to stop carrying TikTok and that the giant cloud service known as Oracle currently stores all of America’s TikTok data. 

If TikTok were banned, it might force other apps to pick up its slack. Businesses that have staked much of their fanbase and revenue on TikTok would have to come up with a way to translate their content on other platforms. Linking Instagram accounts through TikTok accounts has become common for many users, so if an exodus occurred the follower counts would likely stay intact. Instagram Reels is a close knockoff, kept afloat by those who have not yet made the transition into the ever-growing blob that is TikTok. We Americans are nothing if not consumers, regardless of alarm bells or their level of legitimacy. 

The most important thing at the moment should be exercising media literacy when it comes to current news surrounding TikTok. If China did have access to our data, what would we do about it? What would the average college student, mom or crochet queen do? The best bet is to just keep readIng and stay informed. 

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