As the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to uphold a Biden administration law forcing the sale of TikTok, some Northwestern students say the ban could mean changes to pop culture, club recruiting and social media outreach.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to an American buyer by Jan. 19 or face a blockage of TikTok from U.S. app stores and internet-hosting services.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Friday regarding whether the law interferes with First Amendment rights. According to The New York Times, the Court seemed open to upholding the law permitting the ban and is likely to announce its ruling by the end of the week after fast-tracking the case.
McCormick sophomore Olivia Paik uses TikTok and said she thinks a ban will heavily influence pop culture.
“I’m really upset,” Paik said. “I feel like I also keep up with the pop culture jokes and the current memes and celebrities through TikTok.”
A TikTok ban could also affect news and media consumption. An increasing number of millennials and members of Gen Z rely on the app for news and information, with 39% of adults under 30 saying they regularly access news on the platform, according to a study by Pew Research Center.
Medill freshman Yamandú Capalbo also said he uses TikTok to access a variety of videos serving different purposes.
“Most of the things that I’m streaming — like music, series, TV shows, films — come from TikTok,” Capalbo said. “It’s really great to shape my personality and also get to know more about the world. I don’t see it as the villain here. I see it as a great tool.”
Other students use the app for creating personal content. McCormick sophomore Crystal Cooper runs a TikTok account with over 12,000 followers where she posts “Get Ready With Me” and dance videos.
Her content is also often geared toward prospective and incoming NU students. Cooper said she likes providing future students with a “perspective on how the school is from people your age, rather than from an administrator.”
“I like to talk about my life at Northwestern, and I have made a Northwestern advice video, and I know freshmen have seen it,” Cooper said. “So if it was banned, obviously, no one would be seeing that.”
Cooper added that she worries about student groups that use TikTok as a recruitment tool, saying she thinks TikTok can be “advantageous” in spreading the word about ways to get involved on campus.
Even students who do not use TikTok see its popularity and impact. Weinberg freshman Anjali Ajmani said she doesn’t use TikTok, but she has still seen its impact on her everyday life.
Ajmani said TikTok’s influence on pop culture and daily life can be “pervasive” as videos from TikTok find their way onto other social media platforms.
“A lot of jokes and things my friends say come from TikTok,” Ajmani said. “I feel like a lot of the music that we recommend to each other and things like that come from TikTok as well.”
A ban on TikTok would also have implications for pop culture, impacting the accessibility of video content. Director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy and Communication Prof. Erik Nisbet said that the question of how a ban would affect those creating videos using the app remains salient.
Nisbet said he anticipates that a ban would force content creators to move from TikTok to other social media apps — like Instagram and Facebook — and would have wide-ranging impacts on content creators who use TikTok as a form of income.
“If TikTok is banned, would it be the end of the world? No,” Nisbet said. “But would there be winners and losers? Yes. Some content creators might come out on top that have the larger communities on other platforms. Others might lose out.”
Clarification: A previous version of this story misrepresented how Paik uses TikTok. The Daily regrets this error.
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