Reflecting on the role of Tiktok in society while approaching the new Ban Deadline

On January 18, I was one of the millions of Americans who flowed through Tiktok when the all-round video service service The prohibition of the Federal Government has entered into force.

It was a breathtaking moment that made me in mourning. Where will I go now, I wondered, for my daily dose of Hollywood gossip, news on video games and anime updates?

Tiktok, owned by a Chinese company, Bytedance, and came across a legal deadline to find a owner of the United States or face a ban, returned to life the next day. Trump president So it quickly signed an executive order that extends the window for the sale of Tiktok on April 5.

With that new deadline that is quickly approaching, the fate of Tiktok, which claims over 170 million American users, remains uncertain. But at least for now, a repetition of the January Blackout seems unlikely.

Last month, Mr. Trump He told journalists that could prolong the deadline again. And while bytedance has not confirmed any plan to sell, Oracle, the Data Center and others company emerged as potential pretenders.

The last deadline offers an appropriate time to reflect on the role of the app in society. Here’s what I found.

Tiktok is still the best short video app

Tiktok started 11 years ago as Musical.ly, an app for users to publish synchronized videos, but over time it has evolved on a video app for general use in which people could flow short clips and entertainment clips. Now he has more than a billion users globally.

Over the past five years, while Tiktok has increased in popularity all over the world, Meta, Google and others have produced clones that have allowed users to scroll infinitely through video clips. But Younger users still prefer Tiktok To watch short videos, according to a survey by Emarketer, a research company.

The preference for Tiktok can be connected, in part, to the quality of the product. The videos made on Tiktok are generally better – clearer, more strictly modified and captivating – compared to videos produced with similar apps such as Instagram coils. ;

For me, when Tiktok was briefly down, passing to the coils he felt exasperating. Many users have published videos that seemed incomplete, like a video of natural leavening bread that asked me to read the caption to learn to cook the perfect loaf. Why not explain it in the video instead of a caption written in a small text?

Meta, who owns Instagram, is playing to recover To TikTok editing tools. An Instagram spokesman referred to the company announcement of changes, a capcut competitor for modifying the videos of the rollers, which should debut in the coming weeks. The tool will allow Instagram users to upload videos to a higher resolution, which will improve the quality of the image, among other advantages.

The secret sauce of Tiktok, which others have not replied, is his algorithm to determine what people who want to see later. Many said in the polls that Tiktok is more in tune to emerge the types of videos that want to watch, from everything, from ideas for meals to video games, keeping them glued to their screens for hours a day.

Mental health problems are increasing

Tiktok’s effectiveness in keeping people in scrolling was a topic of widespread concern between parents and academic researchers who wonder if people could be considered dependent on the app, similar to video games addiction.

Studies on the subject continue and remain inconclusive. A, Posted last year And led by Christian Montag, professor of cognitive and brain sciences at the University of Macao in China, he examined the excessive use of Tiktok. Very few people in the study, who involved 378 participants of various ages, reported feeling dependent on Tiktok.

Yet in general, the consent of numerous studies on Tiktok and other social media apps is that young people are more likely to denounce dependent feeling, said dr. Montag in an interview.

“I think children should not be on these platforms at all,” he said on Tiktok and similar apps. The brain of people can take at least 20 years to mature and car -Rear, he added.

A Tiktok spokesman said that the app included tools for people to manage their time on the screen, including a new setting for parents to prevent Tiktok from working on their children’s phones during a few hours of the day.

It is a growing marketing platform for brands

Tiktok has become an important hub for companies to promote their products through published videos and items sold through the Tiktok store, an in-app shop.

The company is working hard to make the Americans aware of its impact on the economy, it manages a Schizzinosa advertising campaign In newspapers and billboards they portray themselves as a sample of small businesses.

A Tiktok spokesman quoted a study that says that Tiktok has led $ 15 billion in revenue for small businesses in 2023, a figure that should be taken with a grain of salt because Tiktok commissioned the study. But it is clear only from scrolling through Tiktok that many brands like to use it to spread videos that demonstrate their bizarre products.

I confess that Tiktok’s videos prompted me to buy an instrument too expensive to remove the dog fur from the car seats and an automatic scrubber to clean the kitchen sink.

As for the so -called creators, the influencers who publish Video by Tiktok who often become viral, the platform is generally more useful for self -freedom than to make money, said Alyssa McKay, an actress in New Jersey with over 10 million followers of Tiktok.

A video that gets two million views could earn some dollar, he said. This is because Tiktok pays only for opinions from people who don’t already follow you, he added.

It is still a concern for national security

Tiktok was first banned because the American government officials fear that Bytedance could Share the data it has collected on its American users with the Chinese government for espionage purposes.

Those concerns culminated in a Audition of the Supreme Court in JanuaryWhere the Biden administration presented its case to ban the app, citing the concerns that Tiktok could create a new path for Chinese intelligence services to infiltrate the American infrastructures. But officials did not present evidence of the fact that Tiktok was connected to these threats.

However, Tiktok was connected to smaller data scandals in the United States. Tiktok confirmed in 2022 that four of his employees had been fired for using the app for Snoop on several journalists In an attempt to trace their sources.

A spokesman for Tiktok mentioned AA video Explaining how the app safeguards the data of American users in a server system protected from Oracle, the US database giant with whom he collaborated, to prevent unauthorized foreign access.

Matthew Green, a security researcher and an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said that the security concerns of the United States government on Tiktok have been exaggerated since no great scandal has not yet emerged but also valid because the hypothetical damage could occur.

Many apps made by American companies collect and share our information with data brokers, companies that sell insights to us to the marketers, including some in China. But Tiktok, in particular, can collect sensitive data on the Americans who would be useful for a contradictory government, like their book books, added Dr. Green.

“We are losing so much information that you don’t need Tiktok to worsen things, but things get worse when you have millions and millions of different phones that perform this app,” said dr. Green.