Cuture Shock
TikTok has woven itself deeply into the lives of millions of Americans
Love it or fear it, most pundits say, TikTok has changed American culture.
And now that President Biden has signed into law a bill to ban the platform or force its sale to an American company, America’s relationship with TikTok is likely to get even more complicated.
The new law, pushed by Congress this past week with strong bipartisan support, is intended to diffuse any action by China to use the social media juggernaut to meddle in this fall’s U.S. elections. As written, it will allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States, but only if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells TikTok within 270 days, or about nine months from now. It is a timeframe the President could extend to a year. Otherwise, TikTok could be banned nationwide.
But don’t count on it—yet. Beijing will most likely challenge the law, either legally or by blocking the sale or export of the technology altogether. It’s also not clear who might have the resources to buy TikTok from ByteDance, which would carry a huge price.
But one thing is already clear. Domestic opposition to all of this is already becoming another election year issue facing the Biden administration. In just a few short years, TikTok has become a powerful fixture in the lives of tens of millions of Americans, including those who’ve never even opened the app.
Go ahead. Ask some of the people you know who use TikTok to imagine how their lives might change without it.
We did, and what we’ve been hearing recently has been, in some ways, surprising. Conversations about TikTok are hard to ignore these days, but GenZers aren’t the only Americans who want TikTok to stick around.
Imagining Change
The New York Times writer Dana G. Smith said that if TikTok were banned in America, “it would feel, for a while, like the internet’s big content spigot had been turned to a trickle”—for better, maybe, but also for worse. TikTok reporter Sapna Meheshwari said that if the platform was disappeared, we’d grieve deeply, first by denying it would make any difference, and then admit a short while later that it’s been indispensable.
Meanwhile, GenZ pundits, including author/TikTok influencer Taylor Lorenz, have said a TikTok ban would make millions of young people feel like they’ve lost a valuable on-ramp to cross-cultural discovery and ties to new communities of like-minded, global peers. And Hollywood’s Old Guard? Studio executives interviewed by dozens of news outlets were recently quoted as saying a TikTok ban would rob them of their industry’s newfound, multi-million dollar ticket-selling machine, which played a large role in reinventing the promotional strategies used to launch last summer’s “Barbenheimer” hits—Barbie and Oppenheimer. Both films ended up grossing more than $1 billion each at the box office.
Even Vogue editor Anna Wintour says TikTok has become indispensable as a new way to influence and connect. She recently characterized TikTok, the lead sponsor of next month’s glitzy Metropolitan Museum’s fashion gala in Manhattan, as “a new kind of brand ambassador” that has come “to both feed us and bedazzle us with its blush of upstart cool.”
And let’s not forget the college student crowd. Based on a quick, informal survey of my grad students at Columbia University in Manhattan and Milan, most of the 250 who responded said TikTok has made itself “a bonafide habit” and “a valued guide” in how to plan social change campaigns, watch how-to videos about things hard to find elsewhere and navigate some of the mental health challenges some students are experiencing now, during Columbia’s third week of on-campus protests against Israel’s war on Hamas, nationwide. Even students who don’t use the app said they think TikTok has become a big part of American life, influencing the news we consume, the movies and trailers we see, the politics we track and even the conspiracy theories we get exposed to— as well as some of the culinary trends making their way into all of our kitchens.
And it’s no wonder. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok. That’s nearly half the population of the United States, a highly diverse lot that keeps expanding.
Influence rising
Since TikTok kicked off its latest lobbying campaign in Washington to fight this serious threat to its autonomy, we at #NewRules have been collecting some examples of how the app has been increasing its influence here in America, for better or worse.
Marketing. The United States is TikTok’s biggest market. The app is popular in countries worldwide, but most of its users are concentrated in the United States. U.S.-based businesses, large and small—many of which used to dismiss TikTok as a dance video site—now have been scrambling to take advantage of TikTok’s business services. The app’s special algorithm is proving to be a more powerful sales tool than other social media platforms, and far less expensive. Just last week, for example, John Deere, the 187-year-old tractor maker, announced its search for a “chief tractor officer” to launch its new TikTok channel “ to help make agricultural and construction equipment more relevant to young consumers.” Says Jen Hartmann, Deere’s global director of enterprise social media: “TikTok can really make an impact with videos showing people who think about where their food comes from how to plant it, themselves, using our equipment.” Small businesses also have been flocking to the platform. The Pink Stuff, a small and once obscure British business selling a home cleaning paste, became uber-famous on TikTok—and then in the U.S. as a popular Walmart staple, after dozens of videos demonstrating the product got more than 500 million views on “CleanTok”—a part of TikTok for people who deep-dive on cleaning products. TikTok influencers helped to share many of those videos, and the company’s sales skyrocketed.
News. As TikTok’s early users have gotten older and more young adults are being drawn to the platform, the social media juggernaut has been veering rapidly into a new role as a major news source and effective mobilizer for social action. Its feted new “For You” algorithm factors “community interests” into the diverse but highly tailored content it’s been recommending to each user, and this unique strategy among social media platforms has dramatically increased TikTok’s popularity and influence. Pew Research says at least half of American adults—nearly 40% of those aged 18-30 and some 25% of those 31-48 —now get their news directly from TikTok rather than from traditional media, quadrupling its reach since 2020. TikTok’s popularity as a news source for younger people also has been continuing, unabated, thanks to TikTok’s video influencers who relate news stories to their audiences in highly visual ways and tell them in short, fun and simple terms why it matters.
Political campaigns. TikTok’s influencers and users have been widely perceived by campaign managers to have more trust, credibility and reach among the 14 million GenZers who will be eligible, age-wise, to vote for the first time in November. Acknowledging the irrefutable power of appearing on TikTok to reach millions, President Joe Biden has been inviting top TikTok influencers to the White House in recent months to get their input on what they’d like to see from government. Biden turned down a chance earlier this year to appear on CBS to address the tens of millions of potential voters tuning in for the Super Bowl. He opted, instead, to release his first TikTok video that same night. “Chiefs or Niners?” someone asked him from behind the camera to open the clip. Biden, dressed casually, answered, smiling: “Two great quarterbacks; hard to decide.” It was a simple 30-second video, but an instant hit. Pew Research says that TikTok’s app has been GenZ’s favorite social media platform, and both Trump and Biden have active TikTok accounts.
Next Steps
So what now?
As written, the new law gives ByteDance until January 19, 2025, to sell TikTok or face a nationwide ban of the app. That means TikTok will likely continue to be available, at the very least, throughout the November election and afterwards—and at least until the day before either Biden or Donald Trump would be inaugurated to begin a second term in the White House.
The new law may also catalyze a new round of trade talks with Beijing that could influence a different kind of roadmap towards settlement, and that would likely also take quite a while to complete. For its part, ByteDance has already pledged to fight a forced sale or possible ban, either on First Amendment grounds or via other actions, which also could take a while to resolve—or, if successful, nullify the law altogether.
There’s also another way to think about all of this. Beyond Washington’s national security concerns, how much of this dust-up represents another example of how the Old Guard is challenging the New Guard in our weirdly fluid geopolitical marketplace today? And is this effort to control the borderless reach of digital media another “first look” at the long-tail power of the internet to disrupt social, cultural and political norms as it morphs and forces our systems to reset for the future?
TikTok’s cultural influence over us, some historians suspect, is not about to end any time soon.
What’s you take on TikTok? Share it here. Our growing network will value your insights!
UPDATE: This article has been updated to reflect President Joe Biden’s decision on Wednesday, April 24th, to sign the TikTok sale-or-ban bill into law. The bill was approved by the U.S. Senate late Tuesday and by the House last Saturday.