Students at Ohio State have easy access to TikTok making it a popular app among the college age group. Credit: Kathleen Jones | Lantern File Photo
The highly popular TikTok is woven into the fabric of society at large. However, its influence could unravel earlier than expected.
A video-sharing app owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, TikTok has more than 1 billion total downloads to its name, according to Google Play. Despite this success, TikTok faces an uncertain future in the U.S. due to mounting concerns about its data collection practices, Carter Yagemann, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State, said.
The potential of a nationwide ban is upsetting for many users because TikTok is emblematic of youth culture, Catherine Cheng Stahl, a Ph.D. candidate in curriculum and teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, said.
The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, also known as the RESTRICT Act, was introduced to Congress on March 7; if the bill becomes law, it could empower the U.S. Department of Commerce to deem TikTok a national security threat and subsequently ban the app. TikTok is already banned on federal government devices, and several state-level governments — including Ohio — have followed suit.
Though the RESTRICT Act has not been considered on the Senate floor at the time of publication, geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China remains high, Yagemann said. He said this tension creates a newfound sense of urgency surrounding data security.
“For a long time, we’ve kind of kicked the can down the road about what to do in terms of trying to protect user privacy and the use of collected data,” Yagemann said. “Up until this point, when we talk about companies like social media, we’re predominantly talking about companies like Facebook and Twitter, which are U.S.-based companies.”
People who download TikTok typically grant it access to their mobile devices’ cameras and microphones, Yagemann said. Location data can also be collected and used for targeted advertising, he said.
Such data collection is commonplace across today’s digital landscape, Yagemann said.
“At least going off of what we do know, for people trying to do a little bit of reverse engineering, what TikTok is collecting is comparable to what other social media giants like Facebook and Twitter collect,” Yagemann said.
Even so, there is a lack of transparency in TikTok’s algorithm as well as what happens once users’ data is stored in TikTok’s servers, Yagemann said. When motivated by the obvious incentive of connectivity, users might sideline their fear of the unknown, he said.
“They understand a clear benefit to them, which is their ability to socialize and have fun with their friends and family,” Yagemann said. “The true cost of the potential privacy concerns is the nebulous part. So, since you have a clear benefit, but an unclear cost, that’s why people continue to use these apps.”
Cheng Stahl, who co-authored a research article titled “#GenZ on TikTok: The collective online self-portrait of the social media generation” published in 2022, said Generation Z is directly fueling TikTok’s cultural significance.
Gen Z, or those born between 1997 and 2012, tend to treat TikTok as a time capsule, Cheng Stahl said. After studying nearly 2,000 TikTok videos bearing the #GenZ hashtag, she realized a majority of Gen Z’ers feel a loss of childhood they attribute in part to COVID-19.
“There were a lot of videos of them reminiscing kind of on their pasts and thinking about shared memories,” Cheng Stahl said. “That sort of shows how ready or not they are to enter the adult world.”
Furthermore, TikTok serves as a comforting yet vast refuge for Gen Z’s diverse members, Cheng Stahl said. The possibility of encountering new perspectives of the world every five to 10 seconds is valuable, she said.
“This is significant, especially for traditionally marginalized youth like Asian Americans, queer youth, immigrant youth, etc.,” Cheng Stahl said. “They’re able to see so many possibilities of identities that they would otherwise not see in their home spaces and school spaces.”
If TikTok were to be banned in the U.S., Cheng Stahl said she believes Gen Z is adaptable enough to withstand the fallout and find new digital spaces to experiment with.
“I can see other apps sort of stepping up and finding ways to replace TikTok,” Cheng Stahl said. “Or there might be just another startup company that takes over and does something maybe entirely different that finds appeal with this generation.”
At present, data collection is simply a fact of life from a social and technical standpoint, Yagemann said. He said regulating gathered data to a greater degree, whether it’s used to forecast a rainy day or target ads, is a promising solution to some of the data privacy issues plaguing TikTok and other social media platforms.
“The data is going to be collected no matter what we do,” Yagemann said. “What should the oversight be in terms of being able to make sure that people understand how that data is being used?”
