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New and existing art exhibits in the city

Monday, May 20, 2024

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Former Hawkeyes star starts with Indiana Fever

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Honoring seniors' four years of hard work

Convent of the Sacred Heart HS | San Francisco, California

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Celebrating Congé in the Presidio

Vol. 30, Iss. 5

Madelon Podell | THE BROADVIEW

The future of TikTok

Congress to ban social media app for nation

Heidi Yeung Copy Editor

he House of Representatives passed legislation last month mandating that if ByteDance, the Beijingbased parent company of social media app TikTok, is not sold to an American company within six months, the United States will ban the app. The ban is part of a larger bill enacted by Speaker Mike Johnson and a $95 billion foreign aid package from House Republicans that provides funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. This bill’s effects will first quickly affect the battlefields in Ukraine, but also involves the banning of the social media app. This marks the first instance in which Congress has passed legislation to shut down any sort of social media platform, according to NPR.

“While I’m not pro-banning anything, I am unsettled by China’s involvement in this because I think that the US should control their platforms on their own,” Ethics teacher Clint Hackenburg said. “That being said, I don’t want the US to ban random platforms as it seems unnecessary,” This legislation was passed due to concerns over national security risks, with fears that the Chinese government could access American users’ data or manipulate the content from the platform for misinformation. For most students, misinformation on TikTok is not an outright common occurrence, according to senior Sophia McConathy. “Generally misinformation can definitely be spread but not necessarily more than any other social media or news app,” McConathy said. “It’s important

to not quickly believe anything you see online without checking other sources too– that being said I personally have never come across misinformation that was bigger than some celebrity drama,” However, limiting people on social media could also prove to lower screen time averages, which can be up to 8 hours per day, according to Cosmo Together. “I think that so much misinformation is spread throughout social media every day and this would limit people on social media,” Hackenburg said. “But if TikTok is fully banned, something worse could replace it,” TikTok has become a leading form of social media as it’s gained over 1.5 billion active users since its international release in 2018. It has become a regular source of entertainment for many teens daily, according to McConathy.

“If TikTok is banned, I think that it will have an impact on how teens spend downtime,” McConathy said. “Right now a lot of people use TikTok as a form of entertainment and so without it, I bet that there would be an increase in use for Instagram or streaming services like Netflix and HBO,” The app is video-based: clips ranging from a mere few seconds to ten minutes can be posted. Because of this, content on the platform can be appealing to anyone, according to McConathy. “TikTok tends to have the ability to suck the user in because of the endless supply of videos — which is why it’s so popular,” McConathy said. “Overall, TikTok is really unlike any other app on the market right now and I think that there will be backlash if it gets banned.”