On January 19, 2025, the popular social media platform, TikTok, was banned in the US for 12 hours. The ban came after several years of criticism by the United States government of the app under grounds that it poses a national security threat to the American people.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a major Chinese tech company known for its video sharing platforms. According to the BBC, every major Chinese enterprise allegedly answers to officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the goal of furthering the party’s agenda. Many government officials believe that TikTok users are at risk of having their data exploited by the CCP.
The US began its national security review of the app in late 2019. By 2020, President Donald Trump had issued two executive orders relating to TikTok: one banning American companies from any transaction with ByteDance, and another demanding that ByteDance divest from TikTok’s US operations. In March 2024, a bill to ban TikTok passed in Congress. The bill was upheld by the Supreme Court in January, enacting the ban.
Under China’s National Intelligence Law, any Chinese citizen or organization is compelled to “support, assist and co-operate with the state intelligence work.” The law obligates cooperation with Chinese authorities if they request assistance or information.
TikTok officials deny any claims of sharing user data with the Chinese government. “The suggestion that we are in any way under the thumb of the Chinese government is completely and utterly false,” Theo Bertram, TikTok’s head of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said.
David Weisman, a Lick-Wilmerding High School (LWHS) parent who works in cybersecurity, believes that critics of the social media platform raise valid concerns about the app’s potential data sharing practices. “TikTok isn’t the only Chinese business used in the US but has a very large user base outside of China. This raises greater concern that a much larger population impact would be involved here,” he said. “The Chinese government today has a very different sense of privacy laws than much of the rest of the world.”
According to data from Pew Research Center, one in three US adults use TikTok, 59% of which are under the age of 30. Six in ten Americans see TikTok as a potential threat to national security, and two thirds of Americans are concerned with how the platform handles user data.
LWHS student and TikTok user Augie Nice ’25 worries about how much data the app collects. “I’m kind of concerned because they know me so well… the TikToks I get on my for you page are honestly too specific,” he said.
Many Congress members have denounced the platform for its alleged usage of user data to benefit the Chinese government. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, claimed that TikTok is “China’s best detective.” Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, referred to the app as “a gun pointed at American’s heads.”
photo by Jordan Groocock
When asked to provide evidence of these grave security concerns, however, some legislators cannot provide tangible answers. “Yes, [there is evidence supporting a TikTok ban, but] a lot of it is classified,” anti-TikTok representative Raja Krishnamoorthi said in an interview with ABC News.
A computer science professor at San Francisco State University believes the investigation into the app is not warranted. “I think that the only reason that [the US government] banned [TikTok] is because this company is from China. They didn’t find evidence showing that TikTok misused users’ data,” he said. The professor raised concerns that a TikTok ban will set a harmful precedent for non-US companies operating in the US. “In the future, every foreign company will feel unsafe,” he said.
SFGate tech reporter Stephen Council believes that many government officials are uninformed on the issue. “The tech industry is sort of infamous for having very little regulation in place around it,” he said, “part of that is the inability of Congress to respond to quick moving trends like social media and artificial intelligence, and then part of it is the actual [tech] companies suppressing regulations over the years.”
Other legislators are in favor of the app in the US, recognizing the positive impact it has had on some users. In January, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen called on the Biden administration to extend the TikTok ban deadline, which would give the company time to divest. “A TikTok ban taking effect…would be profoundly harmful, from creators losing their livelihoods, to communities losing an essential communication tool,” Markey said in a press release.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law scholar and dean of UC Berkeley law, believes that a TikTok ban could harm American’s right to free speech. “I think the TikTok ban violates the First Amendment rights of those who post there and those who view the videos. Banning a platform for expression restricts speech by those who post videos and those who watch them,” he said. “I do not think the Court adequately explained how national security would be hurt by TikTok being owned by a Chinese company.”
LWHS student and TikTok user Olivia Sze ’25 similarly pointed out the app’s utility as a place to spread knowledge. “It’s just a very accessible app, and something that millions of people across the country use…I think sometimes it is a good way to discover [and learn] new things,” she said.
Marcel Bihan ’25, another TikTok user and LWHS student, thinks the social media platform poses similar risks to other apps. “I feel like the scare around our information being taken by the Chinese government is kind of drawing attention away from our information that is being taking by US companies like Instagram,” he said. Sze agreed. “I know that TikTok…is collecting a lot of my data and finding things out about what I’m interested in, but I don’t think it’s any worse than any other social media apps,” she said.
While the future of the app is uncertain, the need to protect one’s data remains. Weisman believes that the investigation into how tech companies collect data should not end with TikTok. “If [the US government] is really worried about privacy of users, privacy laws should be an expectation of every app that collects data on users, regardless of whether the company is Chinese, German or American,” he said.
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