At the beginning of 2025 the news broke that TikTok would be banned in the United States for everyone on January 19th. TikTok has sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government which was leading to restrictions and bans in the United States. This is only one of many concerns the U.S. had for our country. Way back in 2020, the US considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat.
I myself own a TikTok account and I don’t know how I would feel without it and I’m sure that the rest of the students at Lively would feel the same. I use it for personal blogs, businesses, cooking ideas, styles, get ready with me and more. On January 19th many others like me including many Lively students opened the app TikTok and saw a big ban notice, after a couple of hours the app opened back up saying thanks to Trump the app is unbanned.
For now, many believe that Trump is just trying to get more people to support him.
Students had lots to say about the ban. “I think that because it’s entertaining and you could make money off it,” said 8th grader Saira Juarez.
That’s also another reason why a lot of content creators made accounts on other platforms because that’s where some of their income comes from and without it they wouldn’t make as much, even though TikTok is mostly a backup app so supporters could watch.
What is something good about TikTok?
“It shows you a lot of stuff and the TikTok shop is good,” said 8th grader Josiah Gutierrez.
Students from Lively seem to agree that TikTok isn’t all that bad and could be helpful and convenient, certain sports like volleyball you ask or could learn about the things around the world plus life skills. For instance if you want to learn how to be better at searching for videos and get advice from real athletes. Staying on top of trends is a really big thing because a lot of peoples styles are inspired by others on the app.
Comment here and tell me how did the TikTok ban affect you for the first couple of hours?
