I was in my freshman year of high school, and I had just immersed myself in the world of social media. A few months before, I had downloaded Instagram. Then there was this app called TikTok. I didn’t know much about it, except that its predecessor was another app called Musical.ly. I then downloaded TikTok because I knew a lot of my friends at the time were obsessed with the app.
I thought of a username on the spot, after one of my favorite desserts. I remember my first profile photo was of my Vans purple checkered shoes. I remember recording my first video in October 2019 and feeling like I had found a new hobby. I didn’t think anything else of it.
Security issues never crossed my mind until I was in my civics class a few months later. I remember my teacher showing the class videos about safety issues related to TikTok, because the Chinese government supposedly uses it as a tool to spy on American citizens and track their locations. TikTok is a Chinese app owned by a parent company called ByteDance Ltd. Back then, and still today, the United States and China are not on the friendliest of terms.
My teacher recommended that if we wanted to share our content and get comments, we should make our accounts private and share the content only with our friends. At that time, I actually did make my account private. Not just that, but I switched my videos to a setting where only I could see them. I had exposed secrets that no one could dare to know. TikTok was like a therapeutic outlet, in a sense.
Throughout the years, I have learned that there have been multiple attempts to ban the app by the U.S. government. But nothing was huge, and the app was never banned. That was, until U.S. President Joe Biden signed a new law on April 24, 2024. He demanded that ByteDance either sell the app to an American buyer or it would face being shut down. ByteDance refused to give in. The Biden Administration wanted to ban the app because it prioritized national security over censorship, despite many people not being bothered by security issues. So, after the Supreme Court ruling on the case TikTok Inc. v. Garland (2025), TikTok was set to be banned on January 19, 2025.
The American TikTokers went into an uproar. Some have made a living off of TikTok by using monetized programs (such as the Creator Fund) and utilizing the TikTok shop feature to earn commissions. That is when people started to look for solutions. One woman suggested setting up a VPN in another country. In fact, a Massachusetts senator, Ed Markey, actually sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden to extend the ban for 270 days. The Supreme Court did not budge on its decision.
One of the most common solutions, however, was switching to a new platform called Red Note. I remember seeing so many users announce that they would move to Red Note, that it was going to be the next greatest app. It seemed to be a crisis of “TikTok refugees.”
I knew that January 18 was not going to be an easy day when I saw a notification that TikTok would be going under a ban shortly. My almost five years would be coming to an end. After finishing my last ever TikTok, when I tried to publish it, I kept getting an error message that it wouldn’t upload. As it turns out, it was not a technical difficulty. The ban was already in place. When I left the app and tried to open it, I immediately got a message that there is a ban in place, and that it’s trying to be resolved soon.
This was it. Maybe it was about time, I spent way more time on that app than I should have. I went to Instagram, where my friends were posting screenshots of the same ban message. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
The next morning, I remember instinctively trying to open the app, then remembering that it was no longer accessible. But suddenly, one time when I opened it, the app acted normally, as if there was no ban to begin with.
“I’m skeptical,” my dad told me. “It could go away again.”
But days later, TikTok was still up and running. That’s when we learned that Donald Trump, after being sworn in as the new U.S. President, extended the ban for 75 days. This would allow more time for ByteDance to find a company to sell TikTok to. If no deal had been made, the ban could go into effect again in early April.
Meanwhile, celebrities like Elon Musk and Mr. Beast are making plans to buy TikTok. So far, there are no significant updates on that avenue.
Some of Trump’s critics believe that the ban was a political stunt for him to gain more credibility with younger Americans. After all, the “welcome back” message that appeared when TikTok opened specifically thanked Trump for his help getting the app opened again.
Despite all this, TikTok was removed from the App Store. So if someone deleted the app during the ban, they could not get it back. That is, until February 13, when the app came back to the App Store. Slowly but surely, TikTok was returning to its sense of “normalcy.”
Fast forward to April 4, and it was the night before the new ban. However, I noticed that everyone was not as concerned as they were in January. Maybe they suspected that the ban would be extended again. Sure enough, it was, because Trump extended the ban for another 75 days. This would give even more time for ByteDance to be sold to an American company.
For now, we are all taking TikTok day by day. We’ll see what happens this upcoming June. It seems that the more there are more ban warnings, the less people take them seriously, because nothing has happened yet. Will TikTok get another extension? Or will it be banned for good? In my mind, I think any scenario is fair game at this point.