An Addendum for Americans’ TikTok: Separation of Media and State

The question everyone wants answered isn’t the question we should be asking. There’s no doubt, to some degree, any kind of ban on any social media platform is an infringement on freedom of speech.

Though the Supreme Court upheld the law which can officially ban TikTok in the U.S., the real question when it comes to the viability of TikTok in America isn’t whether or not it violates the First Amendment  — it’s what kind of ownership we want.

My answer — Americans don’t want to feel owned. Much of our national identity is built on carving out a world of our own, going back to when we declared independence from the British in 1776. 

Over time, Americans have come to value nothing higher than their freedom. The definition of freedom, for some, hyper-extends into what we have the liberty to control. 

TikTok has once again entered the political stage with the recent blackout from Jan. 18-19. The fealty pledged to President Donald Trump in TikTok’s blackout message to American phones and in the welcome back message the next day is a warning bell at the beginning of a transitional moment for our nation.

I think back to the land of way back when when TikTok was Musical.ly, and I used to lip sync to Hamilton songs after softball practice. 

The app brought me joy in 2016, and it continues to do so now even though I’m living a thousand miles from home. The difference is now, TikTok hosts all kinds of discussion, and with each new year of my young life, I learn something new about the world every day from the seemingly infinite communities other users have built for themselves.

TikTok isn’t just a reflection of America, but a reflection of the world. On the app, I’m reminded I’m not alone, and there are millions of first-years like me trying to figure out their own path in both college and life.

I opened TikTok after the fifteenth hour with immediate glee, followed by disquiet caused by the brief, but startling message I was forced to acknowledge. 

“As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” a pop-up notification on the screen read, The Associated Press reported.

I felt an uncanny presence over my shoulder, but no one was there. The message could’ve read “As a result of Sister Jean’s efforts…” and I still would’ve felt parasocially stalked by the same government which ensures my right to privacy.

The timeline of the U.S. government’s involvement with TikTok’s demise begins and will likely end with Trump, who has had the ball rolling on banning the app since originally enacting an executive order regarding TikTok in August 2020. The order proclaims “action must be taken” to prevent a threat to national security, foreign policy and the economy. 

Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April 2024, which stipulated TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, would have to divest from the app. The legislation was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court decision Jan. 19.

Behind the scenes, the social media app Instagram has undergone a cosmetic update, changing the layout of the photo grid on a user’s page from squares to rectangles — evocative of TikTok’s rectangular format. Users found the update suspicious during the premature wake of TikTok and wondered if it was an effort taken by Meta-owned Instagram Reels to take up TikTok’s mantle.

Since TikTok’s return to the states, users from other countries celebrated America’s brief disappearance from the app, leaving domestic users shocked, wondering what happened to the communities they were ingrained in only 24 hours prior.

Americans must decide what the line in the sand is for the forced loss of creative expression platforms. We can sit and wait for the inevitable, for an official ban or no-ban to be dragged out into the first year of an already tumultuous presidency, or we can project our enthusiasm beyond our screens and petition our government to get out of media they don’t need to regulate.

We must show we are America, a mosaic of diverse cultures and people — unafraid of making connections across oceans, which TikTok’s short form video content has allowed us to do unlike any other platform with an estimated audience of two billion people worldwide, according to Statista. 

TikTok has spread to approximately 90 percent of all internet users in Vietnam, Chile and Thailand. We the people have to remain individualistic, and we can only do so with a media as privatized as possible. 

Of course, any social media platform must belong to some parent company. At the same time, social media platforms are made desirable by the content shared by people like you and me — we deserve a say in who we want controlling our algorithm.

As long as the Constitution says Congress shall “make no law prohibiting the free exercise of freedom of speech,” the question of ownership is simple. Not the president, not Meta and not even Sister Jean. Like The Loyola Phoenix, keep our country’s media free as a bird.