Three years ago, the government decided not to ban one of the most downloaded apps on teenagers’ phones in the United States, TikTok. Now, the government has reopened the issue to another vote. If the app doesn’t get banned, it will have to be sold by the owner, ByteDance, by roughly Sept. of 2024.
On Wednesday, Mar. 13th, 2024, the House of Representatives pushed a bill to ban TikTok, an app with short and entertaining videos. It’s a concern in Washington that China has all of the data from the United States users. China has a law that they should be given the ability to have Americans’ data on the app. The data the app collects includes face ID, photos, browsing history, and even location. The Senate will see this bill next and will get their input from this decision. The Chinese owner, ByteDance, now has to sell their 50 billion dollar app or ban it from all phones.
The first decision happened a few years ago, in 2020, when former President Donald Trump was in office. Evidently, that ban did not go through as it is still on 170 million phones.
The House wasn’t hesitant and passed the bill with a 352-65 vote on Wednesday. Now, the bill has been passed along to the Senate, where the decision has been slower in the making since there are a lot fewer people comprising the Senate than in the House.
Current President Joe Biden says that if the bill goes through the Senate and Congress, he will sign the ban into law. The law will affect the users of the app which are a large percentage of the younger generation.
The population of the app ranges from Generation Alpha to Baby Boomers but seems to show the greatest number in the Gen Alpha-Gen Z population. Around 80% of users on TikTok are aged from 16-34.
Junior, Miya Thomas states, “It’s kind of just annoying, but at the same time it could help many people.”
Sophomore, Jenna Nail adds to this thought by saying, “We will stay off of our phones more if the app does end up getting banned. This is good because it can give us a chance to do more productive things like being outside.”
Although many people love the app, banning TikTok or even changing it by having it owned by a different company can help users spend more time off of their phones and pay attention to the more important things in life.
As it stands now, the House of Representatives has decided that TikTok will be banned in the U.S. unless ByteDance can sell it in six months.
