Should TikTok be banned in the United States for national security reasons?
Bytedance was a company that was founded in China March 2012 where they later released Douyin in September 2016. The app grew popular all around China, but the company decided to launch a worldwide version of the app a year later.
By November 2017 they acquired Musically which was a very popular app in the United States. Once it hit August 2018, they merged the two apps and created TikTok (Bytedance.com). Now it is the number one entertainment app on the App Store, and it is the second most downloaded app worldwide with 39 million downloads in July 2025 (Backlinko Team).
As the app grew, it caught the attention of the U.S Government. The U.S government began to worry about the national security of American citizens because the Chinese government could use the US citizen’s data.
They also claim that Chinese propaganda is being pushed upon US citizens, which lets China have a massive influence on so many citizens in America. If we look at Congress.gov on the article “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.” it will show that the U.S government passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) which lets the government ban or force a company to sell an app since it’s owned by foreign companies.
Now that the U.S government passed this act Bytedance has been given many deadlines to either sell TikTok to an American company or get banned in America. The first deadline was January 19, 2025, but now it has been delayed multiple times.
Now the new deadline date is December 16, 2025. During these delays Bytedance has been working with many different American owned companies.
Although protecting the U.S citizens data from foreign nations is important, TikTok should not be banned because it affects freedom of speech, takes away a growing source of news and communication, and harms many small owned businesses in America.
TikTok started off as a music app for doing trendy dances and expressing yourself through art, cooking, or more. But now TikTok has evolved to not only be an entertainment app but also to get news.
For example, Tomasik and Matsa Eva from the Pew Research Center state claims that “A fifth of U.S. adults now regularly get news on TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020.
In fact, during that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis “But it has also become a popular news source for young adults. In our new survey, 43% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news there, up from 9% in 2020” (Tomasik and Matsa 25).
This quote means that TikTok is growing as the main news source for young adults and will continue to grow because it provides quick services that make people more drawn to this type of quick styled news.
Tomasik and Matsa Eva from the Pew Research Center basically talk about how TikTok has also made news more direct and quicker with many politicians using the platform to communicate with younger adult audiences.
Independent journalists have been on the rise on TikTok because people have lost trust in mainstream media.
They seem more reliable and more relatable which makes them build audiences that trust them more, since people follow them for their news and their personalities instead of the brand that they work for, it creates a stronger bond between the audience and influencer which makes them seem more authentic.
So, banning TikTok would result in many of these independent journalists losing their following and making it harder for young audiences to find reliable news sources.
It would also make it harder for mainstream news sources to connect with younger audiences.
TikTok is a platform for people to express themselves. Millions of Americans use TikTok to express themselves through art, music, and cooking while finding their communities and speaking their minds.
TikTok is popular for this exact reason because it provides a safe place for people to spread their interest and if TikTok is banned then these people would have to migrate to a different social media app that can be more intense or less welcoming.
According to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.com) states that “The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues the law has two purposes: to limit the Chinese government’s ability to “covertly” manipulate what Americans see on TikTok, and to prevent the Chinese government from accessing Americans’ data.
But, given the lack of evidence that TikTok is being exploited in either of these ways, neither satisfies the First Amendment high bar. The government’s first justification boils down to fear of Chinese government propaganda…” They talk about the TikTok ban and how unconstitutional the ban is just because the company that owns TikTok is Chinese.
They also claim that it is unfair how the U.S government is shutting down an entire platform without any stable evidence of TikTok threatening our data or selling it to others.
The ban would suppress many content creators who use TikTok as their main source of a creativity outlet when they want to post art or their music. Free speech is not only a way to protest, but it’s a way to express yourself.
The online culture of TikTok is very important for some people and banning it would only cause people to migrate somewhere else.
A lot of small businesses all over the United States use TikTok to show their products off and sell their items. Sometimes, they promote their business so that locals can find their customers. TikTok is a great way for these businesses to promote themselves for cheap.
According to the study done by the FIRM Journal of Management Studies, it states that “In the U.S., many small business owners have reported substantial revenue growth through TikTok. For instance, the founder of the skincare brand Love and Pebble stated that 90% of their revenue stems from the platform.”
This source tells us that TikTok gives these small businesses opportunities because they get to creatively promote their products, and many of these businesses rely on TikTok. TikTok even has its own shop where it allows other people to sample a product and record a video promoting it, making it beneficial for TikTok, the business, and the sampler.
If TikTok gets banned, many of these businesses will lose access to cheap promotions and better engagement with their local community.
The United States government claims that TikTok is a serious concern and that the connection with China is too suspicious. They are afraid that the Chinese government will use the TikTok app to store every single piece of personal information to take from Americans.
Though there is not enough evidence to show that China would use TikTok against the United States they believe that the ban is necessary to protect Americans from cyber attacks and prevent China from pushing propaganda on Americans.
However, if we look into the Cambridge Analytica scandal settlement millions of Americans personal data was sold and was misused to influence an election. Facebook is an American owned company that didn’t protect their user’s information which is now considered the biggest privacy breaches of social media history. So, it makes me wonder why TikTok is being banned, but Facebook is still up and only faced a lawsuit.
Overall, TikTok should not be banned because it is very important for United States citizens to have quick news services, have the ability to freely express themselves, and help small businesses.
TikTok helps users get quick news from independent journalists since they are more trustworthy. TikTok also helps users express themselves with music, art, cooking, and more.
TikTok helps small American businesses promote their products for cheap and lets them communicate clearly with their local community.
Although many people in the U.S government believe that TikTok is a weapon that China can use to steal many Americans private data and push Chinese propaganda, banning TikTok isn’t the right move.
References:
Mccumber, Kevin. “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.” Congress.gov, 14 Mar 2024, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text.
Team, Backlinko. “Most Popular Apps: Global Stats & Rankings.” Backlinko.com, 25 Aug 2025, https://backlinko.com/most-popular-apps.
Bytedance, “History of Bytedance.” bytedance.com, 2024, https://www.bytedance.com/en/
Tomasik, Emily and Matsa Eva, Katerina. “1 in 5 Americans now regularly get news on TikTok, up sharply from 2020.” pewresearch.org, 25 Sep 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/25/1-in-5-americans-now-regularly-get-news-on-tiktok-up-sharply-from-2020/.
Gorski, Ashely. “Banning TikTok is Unconstitutional The Supreme Court Must Step In.” aclu.org, 15 Jan 2025, https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-is-unconstitutional-the-supreme-court-must-step-in.
Adji, Riyanto. “TikTok Ban in the US: Between Cybersecurity Issues and Control of Global Tech Markets.” FIRM Journal of Management Studios, March 2025, https://e-journal.president.ac.id/index.php/FIRM-JOURNAL/article/viewFile/6050/2271.
Zialcita, Paolo. “Facebook Pays $643,000 Fine For Role In Cambridge Analytica Scandal.” npr.org, 30 Oct 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774749376/facebook-pays-643-000-fine-for-role-in-cambridge-analytica-scandal.
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