What happens if the US bans TikTok?
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TikTok wouldn’t simply vanish off your smartphone – but in the long term, banning the Chinese video app could rip the heart out of American youth culture, writes Io Dodds. With every passing day, the US government inches closer to doing something unprecedented: banning a social media app used by an estimated 170 million Americans each month.
![[TikTok’s role in ensuring non-famous people experience viral fame is a huge part of pop culture — such as Americans becoming obsessed with British TikTokers’ real-time reaction to experiencing New York for the first time]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/17/18/brits-tiktok-nyc-vlog.jpg)
But what would happen next? Well, TikTok almost certainly wouldn't suddenly vanish off your smartphone, and no police officer would barge down your door to stop your scrolling. Beyond that, things get murky – and the impact might be bigger than it seems at first.
![[Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg passes media and a protester as he arrives for a closed-door gathering of leading tech CEOs to discuss the priorities and risks surrounding artificial intelligence, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Sept. 13, 2023.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/06/05/United_Healthcare_CEO_Killed_Security_98424.jpg)
Backers of the law argue that ByteDance's ownership gives the Chinese government a potential backdoor into the private information of its U.S. users, as well as a powerful covert propaganda tool. TikTok and its supporters argue that the company has already made efforts to wall its U.S. users' data off from ByteDance, and that banning it now would infringe on free speech and impact the livelihoods of millions of people.
So what should we expect if and when the U.S. government finally pulls the trigger?. First things first: the law that Congress passed doesn't make it a crime for you to use TikTok, or to have the app on your phone. Instead, it forces intermediary companies such as Apple and Google – which control the iOS and Android app stores respectively – to stop providing access to TikTok.
