Just after 10 p.m. on Jan. 18, millions of Americans’ nightly TikTok scrolls began to lag. First, the comment sections went blank. Next, videos began to glitch before a bleak message appeared onscreen: a federal law banned the use of the app in the United States.
But included in the message was a glimmer of hope: “We are fortunate that President [Donald] Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.”
A tumultuous 12 hours later, the app was back in full swing, crediting Trump for the save.
Temple students have mixed reactions to TikTok’s temporary shutdown. While some deleted the app of their phone entirely, others anxiously hoped for its return. But some students are not convinced the shutdown and reboot were without political influence, suspecting it was related to Trump’s return to office on Jan. 20.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that happened a day before inauguration,” said Lourdes Cardamone, president of Temple Democrats and a junior political science major. “And I mean, there’s proof of that when the app got reloaded and it said, ‘Thank you, President Trump for reloading the app.’ So I think it was a political move that was very intentional.”
For years, many American TikTok users were aware of the government’s concerns about the app, but it wasn’t until Jan. 17, when the Supreme Court upheld a federal law ban, that the real possibility of its absence set in.
The U.S. government has been wary of TikTok since 2019 when concerns were raised that the Chinese government was misusing the app to collect data on American citizens.
In 2020, Trump signed two executive orders in response. The first banned American companies from engaging in transactions with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. The second required ByteDance to sell off its U.S. operations of TikTok. Now, he’s back in office and says he’s committed to saving the app.
Even for Temple students who don’t often use the app, the commotion around the shutdown came as a shock.
Sumona Sharma, a junior finance and legal studies double major, deleted TikTok two and a half years ago after she noticed its algorithm tracking her usage of other apps. It reached the point where her content kept her feeling trapped in her phone, feeding her video after video of things she already knew she liked.
Although she ultimately believes the initial ban was a good way to get her peers off their phones and back connected with reality, Sharma couldn’t shake the strange feeling that the entire situation was a political ploy — especially after hearing Trump was personally involved.
“I don’t think that the government should be involved in media production or production,” Sharma said. “Or they should not have any meaningful shares, there should be no incentive for governments to be involved in media spaces.”
Other students agree with Sharma and fear media under government control has the potential to be more censored and fear what that could look like. Charly Schultz, a junior media studies and production major, notes Trump’s desire for American companies to own American-used media sources and feels concerned about what may be censored if this happens.
“When it comes to journalism, you can’t put laws on certain things, because that doesn’t make it journalism anymore,” Schultz said. “It just becomes a government platform. And social media doesn’t quite have a spot in there yet.”
Before reviving TikTok, Trump said he wanted it to be at least half-owned by U.S. investors, CNBC reported. He granted a 75-day pause on the ban, allowing ByteDance time to either sell the app or strike a deal with Trump. However, this means the app’s permanence in the U.S. remains unsteady.
By the end of the 75-day halt, users may have moved on. Cardamone noted a wave of TikTok users moving to other Chinese-owned social media that mimic the app, like Lemon8 or RedNote. Aside from access to other apps, Cardamone predicts people will be scared to use the app knowing it could go down again, especially content creators who rely on TikTok for income.
“The fact that Donald Trump was able to make up his mind completely differently in the span of not even a year says a lot about just the future, and how much a president and his administration can affect our social media and what media we consume,” Cardamone said.
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