By Avery Feleppa Social Media Editor

 In 2025, the popular social media app TikTok was originally banned because of national security and data privacy concerns linked to ByteDance, TikTok’s owners. It was supposed to get banned on January 19, 2025. However, it was only banned for around 15 hours. If you deleted TikTok off of your phone, though, you cannot get it back due to TikTok being removed from the App Store because of national security concerns, although it was only banned in the US because of all of the concerned links to the Chinese government.

       The privacy concerns of the TikTok ban according to https://support.TikTok.com included “unwittingly providing sensitive information [from] direct messages.”  According to an article by USA Today, “About 50% of Americans surveyed supported a ban on TikTok while 22% opposed it in March of 2023.” Time Magazine also wrote that people responded with “a mixture of disappointment and resigned humor.” Some people didn’t really care that TikTok was going to get banned because they can watch Instagram Reels. However, some people were mad and upset that the app was getting banned and that their lives were ruined because of the TikTok ban. Even as this article is being written, TikTok’s fate is undecided, though bids for the app are still taking place.