It’s no exaggeration to use the term “exploding growth” if you’re referring to TikTok, a social media, content-sharing platform that has gone from zero to more than 2.5 billion worldwide users, including an estimated 170 million or more in the United States, in less than six years.
The platform showcases short-form user videos. While younger users sparked much of its early popularity, TikTok has grown far beyond that. Research suggests that TikTok has been downloaded more than 4.5 billion times and reaches more than half of U.S. adults. Users spend, on average, almost an hour a day on the platform, making it an increasingly attractive place for advertisers and other revenue-generating content.
For many in the general public, the first time TikTok’s “stickiness” became apparent was in 2020 when Idaho potato worker Nathan Apodaca uploaded a video of himself lip-syncing to Fleetwood Mac’s song “Dreams” as he skateboarded down a highway drinking Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice The video went viral with more than 50 million views in a matter of weeks, prompting sales surges, free publicity for Ocean Spray, about 8 million uploaded streams of “Dreams” in a week, and more than 7,000 purchases of the classic-rock song.
TikTok's Chinese ownership raises concern about data stealing
That’s the fun side of TikTok. Meanwhile, success has brought more than just the well-documented problems that TiKTok shares with other social media platforms, such as the spread of false information and underage users.
In March 14, 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act "(t)o protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications, such as TikTok and any successor application or service and any other application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Ltd. or an entity under the control of ByteDance Ltd."
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance Ltd., is based in Beijing, China. The law allowed TikTok to remain operating in the United States if it were sold to a new owner that was not a foreign adversary country. The deadline for such divestiture was set for Jan. 19, 2025.
TikTok challenged the law, saying it violated free speech protections in the First Amendment. But on the eve of the deadline on Jan. 17, 2025, the Supreme Court in Tik Tok v. Garland ruled that the law was constitutional, allowing the ban to go into effect.
TikTok went dark in app stores, as as companies such as Apple could be found to be violating the law. But just three days after the ruling and on the first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying the ban for 75 days, a reprieve allowed in the law.
As of this writing in February 2025, no sale of TikTok has been announced and the app is available again for download.
Laws barring TikTok based on four main concerns
Before the passage of the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, several other laws and regulations had emerged preventing the use of TikTok out of several concerns, including concerns over the Chinese government harvesting data on Americans or the U.S. government. (TikTok has said that the Chinese government is not accessing its data nor has such intentions.)
Other concerns that led to restrictions of TikTok's use were:
- Protection of children and the ease at which they can join TikTok and access inappropriate content
- Consumer protection and data privacy
- Use of the platform to spread disinformation and lies
- Slanted content designed to promote Chinese government interests potentially at odds with U.S. national security
For example, multiple U.S. states and the federal government had banned the use of the TikTok on government-issued devices such as cellphones and tablets.
Montana adopts law to bar TikTok from being offered in its state
Montana was the first U.S. state to attempt to ban TikTok in a law passed in May 2023. A judge temporarily halted the law from going into effect after TikTok filed a lawsuit arguing that the ban constituted prior restraint on speech, which is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Legislators and the governor argued that the law was aimed at protecting consumer privacy, children and national security based on potential manipulation of content and user data by the Chinese Communist government.
The case was paused after the federal ban was passed in 2024, and paused again after the Supreme Court's ruling and President Trump issued a 75-day delay in the federal ban to allow TikTok to find a non-Chinese-based owner.
States bar TikTok on government devices, college networks
Other bans by federal, state and local governments of the TikTok app on government-provided devices appear to have passed legal scrutiny thus far. If TikTok is sold, it is unclear if these bans will remain in place.
For example, at least 44 states have implemented variations of TikTok app bans on government devices – as well as bans on other apps seen as problematic.
In North Carolina, for example, a state employee can be fired for putting TikTok on a device. Other Chinese-related apps such as WeChat have been banned on government devices in states such as Ohio. New Jersey has banned use of the Russian-based virus-protection app Kaspersky.
As a possible reaction to political pressure to block TikTok, at least 12 state higher-education systems, including the University of Georgia and University of Texas-Austin, have not only banned TikTok from government-provided devices, they’ve blocked the app from campus computer networks, meaning that students and faculty cannot use TikTok on the school’s network, even with their own devices.
A court in Texas found that such bans may be constitutional, noting that users interested in TikTok still had other ways to access the app. Arguments by professors that the ban inhibited their ability to teach about the same issues that concerned legislators didn’t sway the court.
States challenge TikTok through consumer protection laws
Indiana was the first state to challenge TikTok through civil litigation under its consumer protection laws, filing two lawsuits in 2022 alleging that TikTok didn’t do enough to protect children from mature content and that the Chinese government had a clear ability to access TikTok’s user data, algorithms and other features.
“The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said in a prepared statement. “With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law.”
A state judge dismissed Rokita’s lawsuit against TikTok on multiple grounds. The IndyStar reported that “a federal judge … slammed the case as ‘irrelevant posturing’ and ‘hyperbolic allegations.’”
In January 2024, Iowa became the latest state to sue TikTok, claiming the platform did not do enough to protect children 13 and under from content such as explicit sexual material, self-harm and drug use. Arkansas and Utah also have similar lawsuits pending, according to the Associated Press.
This article was written by Dennis Hetzel. Hetzel was a reporter, editor, newspaper publisher and journalism professor before becoming executive director of the Ohio News Media Association and president of the Ohio Coalition for Open Government, where he worked extensively on open government and First Amendment legal issues. It was updated in February 2025.