JAN 23, 2025 | NEWS | By Lilly Asano
At 7:13 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 18, Lulu Khan ‘27 held up her phone with a glowing white message in the middle of a dark screen. The Colorado College Tigers hockey team trailed the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs by two points, but students in the Mike Slade ‘79 Student Section weren’t focused on the game. Different users had access longer than others, but when Khan’s app went dark, it was official: TikTok was banned.
“I was shocked at how early it happened in the day,” said Molly Vance ‘27. “I thought it was going to happen the next day.”
According to the Associated Press, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, created Musical.ly in July 2014. The lip-syncing platform took off and later merged with TikTok, a separate app with the same model, in 2017. Over the next eight years, TikTok transformed the media landscape and how consumers interact with information, boosting the rise of influencers.
In 2022, concerns arose about ByteDance Ltd. leaking U.S. data to the Chinese government. The app had faced government scrutiny before, but in April 2024, former president Joe Biden signed a law that required ByteDance to sell TikTok to remain in the US.
Congress later imposed a deadline of Jan. 19 to shut the app down, and as the deadline approached without news of a sale, users prepared to say goodbye to the app. In December, the Pew Research Center found that a third of the adult population in the US is on the app and that more than half of those adult users get their news from TikTok.
Other countries that have banned TikTok include India, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
ByteDance sued the US federal government in May 2024, claiming that the ban was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment. However, the Supreme Court struck down those claims on Jan. 17, two days before the ban went into effect. The court pulled from Reed v. Town of Gilbert for its decision. “Content-based laws — those that target speech based on its communicative content — are presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if the government proves that they are narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests,” the case stated.
“As a general matter, the Court assumed (but did not conclusively decide) that the regulations applied to TikTok in this case do implicate the First Amendment,” said Doug Edlin, McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership and a Professor of Political Science. “But for the specific reasons of this case, do not violate the First Amendment.
Like other users, Vance thought the ban would take effect at midnight on Sunday, Jan. 19. However, around 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time, accounts started to go dark as the app volunteered to shut down. The App Store and Google Play removed TikTok from their platforms and informed users they would no longer maintain software updates and bug fixes.
The app was back online 15 hours later. Users in the United States were greeted with a pop-up message similar to the one that had blocked app usage the night before.
“Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Donald Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US,” the official message read.
Users, including Faye Burke ‘27, returned to the app as usual. For some, scrolling through TikTok has become a habit before going to bed or when they wake up. Burke started missing the app the night before when she went for her regular bedtime scroll.
“The initial shock was quick,” Burke said. “I got over it pretty quickly, but as I was lying in bed that night, I went to open TikTok. Nobody talks about this, but they also banned CapCut, which goes along with TikTok, which I love because it’s how I make funny edits of all my friends.”
Along with TikTok, ByteDance’s other apps were banned, including CapCut, Lemon8 and Gauth, which uses AI to assist students with homework. Since Jan. 18, CapCut, Lemon8 and Gauth have not been available to US users.
Some users noticed that the app felt different after the return. Creators couldn’t livestream, and some videos were hard to find, especially about politics and Trump’s inauguration. Content creator @KLoopz told followers that “U.S. TikTok is being censored” in a video that now has over 3.6 million views.
“If you look up the current president’s name and then ‘rigged election,’ it doesn’t come up,” he said. “It comes up in other countries, just not here.”
TikTok has not made a statement on censorship, and evidence of censorship is scarce outside of the app. Still, people have painted the ban as a political scheme organized by Trump to gain popularity in his opening week as president. Trump initially suggested a ban on the app in 2020 but miraculously saved the app almost five years later.
Vance and Burke agreed that the return of TikTok was politically charged.
“He wasn’t even president yet,” Burke said about TikTok thanking President Trump.
For daily users, the ban poses other challenges. Since the app volunteered to shut down before the ban, ByteDance removed its platforms from the App Store and Google Play. Now, users cannot update the app or redownload it if deleted. Burke and Vance noted they thought it was too late to protect data leaks from China but were concerned about keeping the app.
Vance started deleting the app to create more storage on her phone and keep herself off the platform during Block 3, and would later redownload it when she wanted to watch TikToks. Now, she can no longer delete the app if she wishes to return to it.
“Do not delete TikTok off your phone if you ever want it back,” urged Vance.
Vance said she is an “Instagram reels stan,” and may delete TikTok even if she can redownload it again.
Regarding screen time, Burke doesn’t think the ban will change how she uses the app. If anything, it encouraged her to go on TikTok more.
“My habits have not changed since it was [over] such a little amount of time,” Burke said. “I think they should’ve kept it banned for a week and then my habits would’ve changed.”
Unlike TikTok, CapCut has not been unbanned. Burke, who enjoys making edits of her friends and was working on a video for Kappa Alpha Theta’s Instagram page, hopes CapCut will eventually return.
“All the stages of grief passed through me really quickly. However, I am still angry because I can no longer make funny edits of my friends,” she said.
TikTok’s future is still unclear. Despite Trump’s efforts to keep the app online, both Congress and the Supreme Court’s rulings stand. Trump is seeking an extension to find a new owner and has given the app valuable time to decide what’s next.