Future of TikTok in US

In the late 2010s, a Chinese social media app called TikTok started to trend all over the US. At that time, the US government had a wary look on this new app from China due to concerns about leakage of individuals’ online data. Although the government has warned the nation about the uncertain security of the app, the citizens continued to enjoy the app. Soon after, in 2020, the Trump government proposed a policy, aiming to legally restrict the app. However, their attempts have failed to regulate TikTok. Since then, the authority of the government has shifted over to Joe Biden and more evident changes have been made. As of February 2024, 32 out of 50 states have banned the federal and public sector employees’ and state employees’ usage of the TikTok(Lutkevich). Some states have even sued TikTok for misleading contents and doubtful data security. At this point, the question arises: “What economical impacts does banning TikTok have on all the related parties?”. The US will experience a shift in platform, at least the restricted population. While TikTok and China will mostly be damaged by this event due to loss of consumers, the US is very likely to economically benefit from local companies developments.

The loss of consumers will significantly damage the economics of China’s social media market. Unlike other social media from China, TikTok was viewed particularly due to its globally successful business. One of the reasons for the application’s success is its immense number of users from the United States. In fact, the US has the most number of TikTok users with 143.4 million monthly users. Yet, the US is gradually restricting the usage of the app with legal forces. If the US expands its restriction list, it is likely that the application will soon face a permanent ban from the nation. The economical impact can be easily speculated, since it was permanently banned in India starting in 2020. India once boasted an even larger number of users with approximately 200 million users. Of course, loss of user base has caused a significant revenue loss and change of economical and global expansion plans. The unexpected fact is ByteDance, often referred to as TikTok's mother company, has also experienced significant revenue loss. Such faltering of the leading companies in China and accumulating a pessimistic stature from the world would set even higher barriers to Chinese social media companies aiming for global success. Lastly, if the rumors about TikTok profiting from selling user data was revealed to be true, loss of millions of users would also be aggregated to increase the company’s loss list. 

Unlike China, the US will have more complicated economical impacts from prohibition of government officials’ use of the application. One possible impact is that it can eventually widen the scope of the regulated population. As stated earlier in the text, government officials from 32 states can’t use Tiktok. This group can be acted as an experimental group to test and check whether modern US citizens’ lack of appropriate time management, weaker data security, recently arisen health issues, and inappropriate ideology all originated from TikTok. If the research confirms these concerns, the government will have appropriate reasons and data to restrict more people from using the application. This would be very positive to US economics. When users are forced to shift to other platforms, they will likely choose other widely known social media: Facebook, Instagram, and snapchat. As some of the readers might’ve noticed, all the other popular social media sites are from the US. Therefore, immigration from TikTok users would support the local companies by adding user bases. On the other hand, the prohibition might not always result in positive results. The government officials are people who are destined to work for the citizens. One of the best ways to dedicate to them is by knowing what they are thinking about their nation and the community. For decades, social media has been one of the best ways for communication between government and individuals. However, once the government officials are now forced to delete accounts, one of the most effective linkages between the government and hundred millions of American citizens are no longer allowed. Since it is harder for government officials to find out the economical complaints that might be necessary, the policies, even ones relating to economics, can’t be made as easy as it used to be. 

Even within the country of the United States, the prohibition of TikTok is very controversial. While many young people are advocating the application due to its entertainment contents, many older adults are pointing out its substantive defects and negative impacts. It is true that economics should take a substantial part in the process of making our choice. However, it shouldn’t be the only topic to be considered seriously. Many various factors should be examined deeply like my article to make appropriate decisions on whether to ban TikTok in US or not.