TikTok was banned in the United States on January 19th, and Fair Grove students and teachers have had mixed reactions.
TikTok went dark the night of January 18th, meaning that when people opened the app, they could not scroll through videos like normal. The next day though, the app came back with a message saying that the full ban had been postponed.
People who deleted the app after it stopped working couldn’t download it back from the app store. According to TikTok the app will keep running for 75 days as of January 19th or until they unban the app completely.
Kaydie Kane (12) said how she felt about the ban, “This sounds pathetic, but I cried when I realized it was actually happening.”
Kane made a point about how the app could affect her. “I’m a big routine person, if my routine is thrown off in any way I get extremely anxious. I have TikTok time before I go to bed every night so that is part of my routine.”
Joseph Florez, who is Fair Grove’s Freshman English teacher said, “I think if TikTok does go away then people will mostly just migrate to another similar app that already exists, or a new app will take its place.”
Florez explained how he already deleted the app. “When I deleted it, I knew it wouldn’t be in the play-store for a while. If they add it back to the store, it means they’ve decided not to ban it, in which case I’ll reconsider if I want to re-download it.”
Emaley Stallings (12) shared that she has been on the app since it first came out and that she did not delete it when it got banned since she uses it a lot. She explained the app she went to when it got banned, “When it was banned for less than a day I watched Instagram reels for so long,”
Fair Grove High School Art Teacher, Stephanie Brown said, “I’m not on TikTok so I really didn’t care one way or the other. I’m a YouTube shorts kinda girl. Mostly because I don’t have the memory on my phone to download TikTok. I take too many pictures of my children.”
Brown also commented, “Watching a few videos here in and there throughout our day is great. It helps us to chill for a minute and maybe get a good laugh in.”
Like some, Brown is indifferent to the TikTok ban, “I think everyone needs to remember, however, that they still have a real life to live, and losing an app isn’t really that bad.”
