Artwork by Jennifer Ding
Eva Gaitgonde ‘26
SOCIAL MEDIA
1 month, 10 days, 1 day, 1 hour before impending doom. The date of January 19 came promptly and at once. All of a sudden it was the evening before, so I decided to look through my TikTok one last time. At around 10:30, I was sitting in bed, scrolling through TikTok when a notification popped up on my for you page: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately you cannot use TikTok right now.” I felt a pit in my stomach; we were supposed to have another hour and a half before the ban took effect. Feeling betrayed and misguided, I reluctantly turned to the slums known as “Instagram Reels.” I knew that life wasn’t going to be the same when the first reel that popped up was an AI-generated obese monkey running after a golf cart. TikTok had wholesome videos and things that I was invested in, but Instagram Reels... is in a whole different ballpark, is all I can say.
After the abrupt ban of TikTok, I was unsure of what I could spend my time on, so I went to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I pressed TikTok, out of habit but was met with the painstakingly blatant notification saying that it was unavailable; this continued to happen 100 more times when I reached to tap on the app that day. After doom scrolling on Reels for 2 hours after I woke up, I decided to do something about this crisis. I think it is comical that the government thinks an app as trivial and harmless as TikTok deserves to be put on trial and have laws banning it. Now I understand that the conundrum was that China was allegedly stealing our data, but let's be honest; what are they going to find? Timothee Chalamet edits and a bunch of teenagers doing TikTok dances?
In the days leading up to January 19, I saw some people say they were downloading a Chinese app called Red Note because it was pretty similar to TikTok. Since some people are worried that China is stealing our data on TikTok, when it most likely is not, getting Red Note (an app that probably will steal our data) acts as retribution. However, the app turned out to be boring, so I turned back into Instagram Reels for a while. By this time, it was almost 12 in the afternoon and the time without TikTok felt unbearable. I had already accidentally clicked on TikTok multiple times in the past couple of hours when suddenly I pressed on it and I could watch some of my videos.
It turned out that the President had brought back TikTok less than 12 hours after its initial ban. The relief I felt in that moment cannot be described in words. Nevertheless, the amount of heartbreak and grief I felt over an app ban made me question how chronically online I have become in the past years.
Overall, I would say that the TikTok ban was pretty tragic and having all 170 million TikTok users in the U.S. say their goodbyes was frightening!
