TikTok vs. the United States Congress

There is another problem in this doomed society, TikTok is in an altercation with our congressional legislature, and the executive order falls into the lesser category. Now before questions are asked, let me explain. The US is afraid that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is taking data into their knowledge through TikTok, made by a tech giant known as ByteDance. Thus, creating a bill that could free us from any more complications, which the House of Representatives passed with flying colors, the Senate isn’t signing it stating that it is “Not on the highest of our problems,” meaning that the fully willing president cannot sign this bill into action. Both sides of this argument are highly debated to the extent that some are calling for that bill to be destroyed and to convince Congress that it is all ok, some accounts even being temporarily banned by TikTok until they call their senators. While under a call-to-action campaign within the app, some places are even putting out videos to try and get us to go pro-TikTok by restricting those who use the app. Still, I believe it is all propaganda to keep us selling away our data for a measly amount of entertainment. By proving TikTok is bad for us, acknowledging that the company is fighting itself with its own words, questioning the credibility of the info we were provided by Bytedance, and realizing the steps to take to have safer browsing is how I'm going to explain these issues, but in more depth.

Some people believe this is bad for us, but I’m here to prove that wrong to the best of my knowledge and a few resources. The first issue is that people think that everything will be oh so grim after the breakaway from this app, adding on, an article posted by Brian Fung from CNN on March 9th, 2024 CNN.com states “This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.” That interpretation is somewhat right for most, but for me, that isn’t quite accurate. There are other apps like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter aka “X” that can give a plethora of places to post this content while on TikTok, people just scroll through ads without thinking about the people on the other side of the screens. The second one I want to address is the people who are addicted to it, this issue is the biggest of them all. I think the ban is good for us because the kids who go home and sit down to watch TikTok for hours on end are the ones most affected and contribute to global obesity. During the pandemic alone, obesity went up over 20 percent, around the time when TikTok was at one of its many peaks of usage. With Americans addicted to this app, it gives a certain group a little too much power to it.

The main workaround we have towards incriminating the company is that we need proof that the CCP has accessed our data, which a former Bytedance employee has said “The government had nevertheless accessed such data on a widespread basis for political purposes during the 2018 protests in Hong Kong” between the lines of an article by Nicole Narea of vox.com in a post on 3/11/2024. That alone has enough evidence to put a serious halt in most of the United States bonds with the company, and I am pretty sure someone is NOT too happy. 

Though ByteDance representatives think it’s a “direct attack” it just seems a little backward, they steal our data and say we’re in the wrong for trying to ban their app. Talk about hypocrites am I right? Why would they need to know whether or not I like looking at cooking shorts or a sports athlete training for their little protests, what are they gonna do with that, show people how to channel their anger into being shredded with muscle? I dug through laws and agreements and found a perfect articulation from Kevin Freking titled “Can the Chinese Party access our data through TikTok?” on apnews.com on March 13, 2024. The article in summary, “Chinese cybersecurity laws require all Chinese-owned apps bound by an agreement to provide ANY AND ALL user data under special requests by government officials,” means it includes TikTok. Woah, that’s a lot to take in, but that last sentence is the thread of the stitch and pulls it all together, so here's a question: is TikTok entertainment worth my time and privacy? In my opinion, it's not. Any American or allied countries' social media platforms are much safer than TikTok. TikTok’s censorship is biased towards bigger creators and away from smaller ones, meaning big creators are less likely to get banned for things a small creator would do. I recently was banned from the app for being “too young.” I was 2 years older than the requirement, which kinda makes me think that they have bots to make decisions without human revision. That kind of thing makes the story of accessing data more believable. So what did I do, 4 words, I switched to Instagram. The reason is a little bit too simple for even me to understand

 I switched to an American-owned platform like Instagram to stop giving away my information to strangers, and honestly, it was the best decision of my life. It's no secret that social media platforms can be addictive, but when it comes to the amount of time people spend on them, TikTok takes the cake. On average, users spend just over 34 hours per month scrolling through the app's endless stream of videos. That's almost a day and a half of being glued to the screen, consuming a seemingly never-ending supply of entertaining, mind-boggling, and sometimes even educational content. It's no wonder that TikTok has become one of the most popular apps around the world, captivating users of all ages and backgrounds. All that gives me nothing! People's brains have had attention spans drop down to only 8 seconds before mindlessly swiping to the next video. I have no idea why these apps are as addicting as they are, but why does our brain fall out of attention because of it? 

I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure I understand breach of privacy when I hear it. What I’m trying to say is don’t keep TikTok, mostly because of the health, political, and worldly issues it causes in plenty of places. Sure it gave people a place to advertise their small businesses, but like I said Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter (not too fond of the name X), and many other places work just as well. Besides, TikTok's algorithm only focuses on most big creators, so you would have to play along with go big or go home rules.

People will always debate on this topic but I don’t care what actions they take, I would at least try to stay away from harmful apps in the first place before all the endless entertainment sucks me in, which it already did. I went over all those things, even the bad parts about how your data still isn’t safe, without mentioning that I don’t care what you guys do just as long as understanding the topic is a met spectacle.. Ever since I found out that the CCP accessed our data, not just mine, OUR’S, a new light shone on the topic and made me more reluctant to ditch the app without remorse. Maybe other people will follow my lead and take control of the apps they have.