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The Day TikTok Stopped Ticking

The Day TikTok Stopped Ticking
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The infamous, nonsensical app TikTok was scheduled to meet its unfortunate demise on Sunday, January 18th, 2025. The app’s overpopulation of young adults and teens turning to questionable coping methods grieve abundantly across all social media platforms and set to make plans to move forward in a social universe devoid of TikTok. 

Gen Z makes up the entire population of Venice High’s students, who also perform as the major demographic of social media platforms such as TikTok. TikTok alone is one of the main factors in students’ screen time, so needless to say students feel an attachment to the app. While some students are already preparing to move on to different versions of TikTok, others are spending as much time as possible to share the app’s last few moments with it. 

Fortunately, TikTok was reignited and back in business across the US once again within 14 hours of its banning. Unfortunately, some TikTok users deleted the app per its shutdown. Those defeated folks have no way of re-downloading the app or using it again on a device it’s been deleted off of. Those who didn’t delete it have had their full access returned and can use it to their heart’s content. 

I do not use TikTok and honestly see this ban as a good thing. Being constantly referred to as “living under a rock,” I figured I would be one of few students to feel that way, but it turns out that is not the case. 

Lots of students don’t feel such an attachment to the app and aren’t even sad it’s getting banned. Sure it was an app they used and liked, but it was definitely not something they would cry over, unlike many others. 

Junior Estrella Estrada felt relieved and even excited about TikTok’s ban and disappointed when it was up and running again. 

“I was actually kind of excited for it to get banned because I feel like I have an addiction to it so I felt like that was a good way to finally get rid of it,” she said. 

She expressed that now that it’s back she might delete it to properly end her addiction and habit of inadvertently craving it. 

Casually, I asked on a scale of 1-10 how sad they felt about losing TikTok. A group of students ranked from 4s-7s. This group consists of avid TikTok users, but seemed unphased and even doubtful of the legit-ness of the ban.

Senior Lizzie H. said that the possible TikTok ban never worried her. In fact, after TikTok was up and running only fourteen hours after it was banned. She said it felt like a scheme (and even propaganda) to shed a positive light on the new president. 

But now that TikTok is working again and Trump has been inaugurated, the app has taken a turn from its normal silly videos, meaningless brain-rot, and dancing to an almost menacing setting for political awareness and fright. 

After TikTok’s ban was pushed back, Trump has been receiving praise and admiration for his understanding, so you might assume that since he had an impact on TikTok’s accessibility these political videos would pay him back by spreading this message further, but they are quite the contrary. 

Users’ “For You Pages” have been taken over by videos sharing clips of nowadays politicians doing outlandish acts and other users’ political realizations and fears, all with a menacing “Sound” playing over it, but if you are to go to the Search tab and look up “T” the first autofill recommendation is Trump’s account, not any mutuals or profiles you engage with regularly that may include a “T”. 

These “Sounds” seem to be newly trending and play a huge part in the effect, atmosphere, and delivery of the posts. “Sounds” of off putting poems and songs about materialism are taking TikTok by storm with the type of video trend they’ve created. 

TikTok seems to be unaware of these posts because they have done nothing to stop them. It even looks like users are purposefully speaking their minds in sneaky ways to bypass the algorithm and get more interaction with other users. 

The plan to ban TikTok has quickly gone up in flames and now leaves TikTok users in a new state of mind. It seems that this new presidency and the things it brings along with it have ignited a fire of viral free speech on an app Trump once felt threatened by. 

This could be the beginning of a new “This is only the beginning.” 

 

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