It’s been a whirlwind week for TikTok and its roughly 170 million users in the United States.
On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law that effectively banned the Chinese-owned social media app.
Late on Saturday, the app went dark nationwide. But less than 24 hours later, it came back.
Then, on Monday, President Trump signed an executive order to delay enforcing a federal ban of TikTok for 75 days.
Have you been paying attention to the recent news about TikTok? How did you feel when the app went dark? What do you think will be the ultimate fate of the wildly popular app?
In “What We Know About the TikTok Ban,” Sapna Maheshwari writes:
Starting on Saturday night, TikTok, the short-form video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was unavailable in the United States as a result of a new law that banned the company’s apps in the country. By around noon on Sunday, it was back.
Though the law calls on ByteDance to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners or face a ban starting Sunday, TikTok said it was responding to new “clarity” from President-elect Donald J. Trump when it restored service.
Mr. Trump vowed early Sunday to stall the implementation of the ban to give TikTok more time to make a sale that would satisfy the law. It’s still not clear how he’ll be able to do so.
The article looks at whether Mr. Trump can legally reverse the ban with his executive order:
The new law has a provision that says a president can issue a one-time extension of 90 days to the ban, if he or she certifies to Congress that a “qualified divestiture” is underway and that it can take place during that period. But it’s not clear if he can exercise that option now that the law has taken effect. The law was passed by Congress with wide bipartisan support, signed by President Biden and now upheld by the Supreme Court. So to simply subvert it now will raise serious questions.
Why did Congress ban the app in the first place? In “This Was the Government’s Case for Banning TikTok on National Security Grounds,” David E. Sanger explains Congress’s concerns:
… the argument about the risk has typically been described in hypothetical terms: The government fears that under Chinese law, TikTok executives could be ordered to let disinformation seep into the app, and thus deep into the cerebral cortexes of several generations of Americans. In its arguments to the court, the government made the case that because TikTok collects so much data on its users — their interests, their preferences, sometimes even their geolocation — China could use the data for “espionage or blackmail” or to “advance its geopolitical interests” by “sowing discord and disinformation during a crisis.”
And, in the related article “In the United States, Users React to Life (Briefly) Without TikTok,” Madison Malone Kircher and Eli Tan talked to TikTok fans about the momentary ban:
“I can’t believe I’m making an Instagram reel to complain about this right now because normally when anything happens in the world, I go to TikTok,” the influencer James Charles said in a video late Saturday night.
Mr. Charles, who has 20 million followers on Instagram, was reacting to the notification that users in the United States had received earlier in the evening informing them that the app would be going dark.
The article continues:
“It was just so disappointing,” Casey Lewis, who writes the youth culture newsletter After School, said of using Reels after the ban went into effect. “TikTok, the algorithm, just knows me and gives me everything I want to see.”
Students, read one or all three of the articles in their entirety and then tell us:
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What’s your reaction to the whirlwind of TikTok news? Did the temporary ban of the popular social media app affect you? How about your friends?
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Do you use TikTok? If so, how much and what for? What, if anything, would you lose if the app were permanently banned?
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Congress overwhelmingly passed the law last year to ban TikTok or force its sale over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to gather information about Americans or spread propaganda. However, lawyers for TikTok and creators who use the app argued before the Supreme Court that banning the platform would infringe on the First Amendment. Which arguments do you find most persuasive, and why?
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In the guest essay “I’m a 17-Year-Old TikTok Junkie. I Need This Ban,” Juliet Weisfogel writes: “I love TikTok so much that I cannot imagine a life without it. And yet I desperately need a life without it.” Does her point of view resonate with you?
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What, if anything, do you think is missing from the debate over TikTok? What do you think adults, particularly those with the power to make decisions about the app, may not understand about it, and especially about how young people use it?
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What do you think will be the ultimate fate of TikTok in America? Do you think it will be permanently banned or sold? What do you think should happen?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.