TikTok is going to be banned by the American government on September 20, 2020 by president Donald Trump, unless bought by an American company from ByteDance: a Chinese company. The history of American and Chinese relations have been sort of complicated, as their relations weren’t necessarily the greatest in the early 20th century. Starting from 1972, Richard Nixon and the Chinese president at the time, Mao Zedong, were able to create an alliance that would unify the two countries during the reign of the Soviet Union to attempt to tear apart their socialist state. However, the Soviet Union has fallen around 30 years ago, and now both countries, led by Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, the current president of China, have seemingly broken this almost fifty-year-old alliance in order to take control of some of the things that they want, such as being able to take control of the South China Sea, as whoever controls the sea will have tons of benefits, including control of the naval division to enhance an already strong and secure military for either side.
However, the relationship between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping began to go south around March 2020, right around the time when the coronavirus outbreak began rapidly spreading from China into the United States of America. Trump and the American government blamed Xi and China for spreading COVID-19 into America, in addition to blaming them for the high death toll. However, all of this could be prevented if America had strict regulations to stop the spread of COVID-19 before it got out of hand. This difference is largely evident by the fact that America has 6.4 million and counting total coronavirus cases, while China only had 85,112 cases, 38th in the world, despite being the epicenter of the pandemic just six months ago. Their relations are separated even further when one country attempts to display an act of dominance to take advantage over the other in a fierce back-and-forth: China demanded that America should pay them 2 billion dollars as a result of the urgency of the pandemic, the United States blamed China for reacting slowly to the pandemic, and even Mike Pompeo, the United States Secretary of State, accused Wuhan Institute of Virology of leaking the virus into the public, etc. Throughout all of this, each side began boycotting certain products to ruin economies that are already in bad condition, and among these products comes TikTok, a Chinese social media app that has popularity all around the country, including the United States of America.
The app TikTok really took the world by storm. The app Vine is almost like the ancestor to TikTok, but while Vine eventually died out in popularity, after a while, eventually shutting down, TikTok doesn’t seem to be withering out and dying in the same way that Vine did. While the concept of TikTok is similar to Vine with short 10 second clips, TikTok seemed to be more innovative and popular. TikTok actually originated from Musical.ly, another social media app that was bought by ByteDance eventually merged into TikTok. It was another app that involved lip singing to popular songs, but it also would never reach the popularity that TikTok would reach. Although I never created a TikTok account and never planned on indulging in the videos on TikTok, the app still manages to find its way outside of its realm. TikTok quickly began expanding its horizons, and its short videos allow anyone to display any skills they have: dancing, cooking, playing music with cups, etc. While its content range remains limitless, the apps large and supportive community is able to spread past its bounds of simply the TikTok app, and now, even as I scroll through Instagram, I see videos that originate from TikTok, but are reposted on other social media platforms, including Instagram and Youtube, which allows the content to spread even more in popularity. Some people are even popular enough to make a living on TikTok, not directly, but their fame on TikTok is enough to earn sponsors from other companies, sell merchandise successfully, among other things. This life that most dream to have, however, has sometimes found the worst in some people, deluded to the point in which anything is done just to receive attention, colloquially known as “internet clout”, even if it is negative, but the ultimate goal is to receive attention from famous people.
While most videos on TikTok are fine, there are some videos, or even worse, challenges, that encourage bad behavior, or involve material that could be insensitive to other people. Obviously, the creators of such videos must take full responsibility for their actions, but part of the problem actually lies in the company itself. The negative videos that are being posted can quickly gain publicity and can influence tons of people that watch to also endanger the safety of their lives and others, even if it is just for a few clicks on their videos. Even if the hashtag and the related videos are only up for a couple of months, those couple of months, even days, is enough to encourage such bad behaviors, simply by clicking and watching these videos. Even though TikTok removes these videos eventually, the app needs to be much more hastier in giving consequences to those who break the Terms of Service, as rules such as posting content that is “deliberately designed to provoke or antagonize people, or “material that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offence, dangerous activities or self-harm” is against TikTok’s rules and needs to be removed.
Regardless of the Terms of Service, TikTok’s users, which are mostly children and teenagers, continue to make content that even a child would probably be smart enough to not do, yet still so many people continue to participate in these challenges in order for a chance to possibly obtain the much-wanted “internet clout”. Sadly, there are a lot more of these challenges than there should be, and really, TikTok should be able to delete videos and disable challenges within hours of these video’s appearances. However, Youtuber D’Angelo Wallace goes through a handful of such challenges that have escalated to the point in which authorities have been called and children have been fined and punished for these actions. Take the Penny Challenge, for instance. The idea of this challenge is to basically to slip a penny between a phone charger and an electrical outlet, in order to create sparks. This is obviously very dangerous, because there is a potential for people to get electrocuted or end up dying. Even if no one gets hurt, such an action is considered arson, as people are intentionally trying to start fires, which also has the potential to burn down an entire building, and even if nothing happens to anyone physically, you could end up landing in legal trouble for attempted arson. Another one of these challenges is called the Cha-Cha Slide Challenge, which doesn’t seem that bad, since the name of the challenge comes from the dance move called the “Cha-Cha Slide”, in which you basically just slide to the left and the right as part of the dance move. However, this TikTok challenge takes it up a notch by doing this in the middle of the road while driving. This leads to drivers purposefully swerving their cars, potentially driving off of the road, or potentially colliding into another car, which could lead to death, for not only the TikTok user, but also the other person who might get severely injured or even die because of the silly TikTok antics. You would think that being old enough to possess a driver’s license would at least make you mature enough to make better decisions, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. There are still a handful more of these challenges that D’Angelo Wallace shows us that make us question whether our future is really in good hands.
TikTok overall is a social media app that really allows users to express whatever they want, but its enforcement of policies that are clearly violations of the app’s Terms of Service clearly aren’t as effective as they could be. Even though the only social media app I use is Instagram, I can tell Instagram is a lot better at monitoring content, and is a lot better at taking action against such content. Even just a couple of hours after a questionable post is made, the post might be disabled, forcing viewers to first read the viewer’s discretion that might be associated with the post, and the post can only be viewed when the viewers understand the precautions, or the post might even be deleted. Sometimes, even comments that don’t seem to be offensive will be deleted, which can be annoying at times, but personally I think it is smarter for Instagram to stay towards the side of caution, instead of not taking action at all.
Even if president Donald Trump only wants to ban TikTok because of the conflict with China, the ban probably affects generation Z more than it affects China, and because of this decision so close to presidential elections, this active generation that is “woke” and aiming for reform might actually vote Trump out, which could ultimately hurt himself and his presidential campaign. On the other hand, supporters of the TikTok ban could certainly argue that the app is not being strict enough and neglecting attention towards issues that they have complete control over. Whatever the case may be, unless it is bought by an American company, TikTok is more than likely going to be shut down on September 20th.