For months now, people have been anticipating a nationwide ban of the beloved social media app TikTok. The weekend of the ban saw houses filled with teenagers and adults alike doom-scrolling in their beds to consume as much media as humanly possible, dreading January 19 when the ban was supposed to take place. While there were many varying opinions and thoughts on the impending shutdown, one common question persisted: What would everyone do once TikTok finally shut down?
There was much doubt on whether the ban would actually be put into effect, or if it was just some elaborate scare tactic to convince TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell. However, the whole thing became very real during the late evening of January 18th when users got a warning pop-up addressing the ban. About an hour after this, at approximately 10:30 p.m. on January 19, the app completely shut down for all American users. Of course, this caused a swarm of frantic texts and calls to friends, acts of phone screens with ban notifications being shoved in nearby faces, and many other reactions to the once-doubted ban. The previous question still lingered, now more than ever.
What frantic Tiktok users didn’t know at the time was that the ban would only last about 14 hours before it was lifted, and everyone regained full access to the platform. So with minimal knowledge of how this would play out, people had many different methods that they used to fill the space that was once used for scrolling. Even if that space was only a few hours, considering most of it was overnight. There are many examples of these methods shown by students here at Davie since a majority of the student population does indeed have TikTok. When talking to students after the ban was lifted, many shared their activities and opinions on what those 14 hours were like. Freshman Emily Hernandez commented on how, for her, the time was inconvenient and annoying. Yet, she found things to do in the meantime.
“I really don’t use TikTok all that much during the day, so the ban happening only in the day and night was really annoying,” Hernandez said. “But I honestly just slept through most of it, and used the rest of the time to facetime my friends about it.”
Most people slept through at least half of the ban, so it would not be surprising if some found themselves relatively unaffected by it. But of course, a ban like this causes buzz and an urge to rant about the topic with friends, which is exactly what Hernandez did. There were many other students who agreed with her, noting their annoyance at the ban taking place during usual scrolling hours. But the rants with friends were able to fill the space for the time being.
This was not the only solution, however. A mere week before the ban, American TikTok users stumbled upon another Chinese TikTok-like app called Xiaohongshu (小紅書) or Red Note (‘Little Red Book’ as the direct translation). Millions of users transferred over there as a backup version of TikTok in case of a permanent ban, including some of our own peers. A student at Davie, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that he also flocked to Red Note with the others. Even in the short amount of time that this app was necessary, he and others found it a welcome salve to soothe the need for mindless scrolling.
“It’s honestly not that bad,” the student said. “I mean the layout is kinda the same, and even though we got TikTok back, I’m probably gonna keep Red Note. It definitely gave me a good platform to scroll on the whole night TikTok was gone, which I really needed.”
It seems that many youth felt they needed some form of entertainment before a good night’s sleep, which is why Red Note seemed to become very popular. Being a Chinese-based app, language learning apps such as Duolingo reported a 216% increase in people taking Mandarin lessons the weekend of the ban. So perhaps the ban served a good use, if only for a little while.
While sleeping it off and switching to a new platform seemed to be the two most popular coping methods of students during the ban, there were definitely some more ways that were used. Like late night baking, watching some morning TV with family, reflecting on what this would mean for short (or long) term entertainment in the long run, complaining to family and friends, or even just simply moving on.
Luckily, to everyone’s great relief, no one had to mourn the app for long. By 12:30 p.m., only 14 hours after the ban had been implemented, American users had complete access to TikTok once again, now free to take their rightful places on their couches, chairs, and beds, starting the first post-ban doom scroll. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that, even though we all found different ways to fill the media void, it is a great relief that TikTok is perfectly usable and okay. At least for now.
