TikTok in Jeopardy?

TikTok had a year of great trends and challenges that took on the world. What if I told you this massive publicity is the same reason it’s at risk of being banned in the USA? The short-form video hosting service TikTok is operated in China under the name Douyin and is owned by the Chinese business ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos that can be between 15 and 10 minutes long. Younger users are more likely to utilize the app, with 67% of teens doing so. As 2022 has ended, we look back on some of our great times. Some of these great times happened to be on…you guessed it, TikTok!  

If you missed these TikTok trends, it’s ok! You can find them on the TikTok app, where they show you viral trends with one tap. Under the Discover tab, TikTok users can scroll through an endless variety of different TikTok trends. You can also see how other TikTok creators are bringing light to video trends.  According to TikTok, these ten sounds or trends were the most popular, They go as the following “Jiggle Jiggle,” “It’s Corn,” “One Thing About Me,” “That’s Not My Name,” “OK, I Like it,” “Picasso,” “Core Memories,” “Things That Just Make Sense,” “Horace,” “Rotoscope,” & “Renaissance Eyes.” These trends had a major impact across social media & brought many people together. There are many advantages of TikTok, one being that it can teach you new things. Many reviewed the app as educational. Don’t get me wrong, some content is absolutely not educationally beneficial, but the good outweighs the bad in most cases. The topics that TikTok videos cover are very broad. What you see is likely a result of your personalized “for you” page, meaning the videos are catered to you.

Banning TikTok isn’t something that can happen overnight, though. For one, it has more than one billion global users, so it’s nearly impossible to wipe it out completely. “Congress can make a law on anything they want, and it could pass. But it also will be constitutionally challenged,” Ashley Nelson, senior professor of practice at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, told Yahoo Finance. For many people, it’s their living! These content creators’ devotion to TikTok shows why US lawmakers and others, who view the platform as a security threat because of its roots in China, will have a challenge trying to scrub it from Americans’ digital lives. TikTok has previously denied allegations that it is a peephole for China’s leadership and opened offices in the U.S. In the last couple of weeks, more than ten states and the US house of representatives have banned TikTok from government devices. Some US congressmen describe it as “digital fentanyl” because of the addictive pull it has on young users and believe it should be blocked across the United States. Some colleges have already restricted the app from their students. The engagement is significant as it was the most-downloaded app in the United States last year. TikTok will keep expanding as this platform now has more than teens watching viral dances and cute animal videos. It’s now become a critical tool for content creators, small business owners, comedians, etc. (you name it!).

All in all, the reality is that banning TikTok in the U.S. is unlikely to happen anytime soon. So, the trends, dances, and skits will keep coming without delay.