TikTok ‘on the clock’ — and the party might literally stop for student journalists

TikTok is more than just an app for users to post their dance videos and watch funny content. For many young adults, it has become a platform for education, advocacy, and the news.

Nearly 40% of adults under 30 today, in fact, say they regularly get news from TikTok.

For student journalists, the popular social media app serves as an important platform both for publishing their stories and for keeping up with trends that may benefit their reporting. 

With TikTok’s future up in the air in the U.S. — it faces a potential ban due to a bipartisan law requiring the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company by January 19 — student journalists and their Gen Z peers are grappling with the potential fallout.

How student journalists use TikTok

Student journalists have leveraged humor and memes, in particular, to engage their followers on TikTok, an approach many find works more effectively on the app than on traditional media platforms.

Caysea Stone, a student journalist in her senior year at the University of Central Florida, has found TikTok helpful both for disseminating her reporting, and as a tool to track developments in her backyard. "I feel like it's such a great resource and tool for everybody to be able to share their experiences,” she said. “And from a journalist’s perspective, it helps me know what's trending locally in Orlando and what people are talking about as well.”

Stone has more than 700 followers on TikTok, and her most viewed video is a piece on how the Orlando City Council passed new regulations for a downtown nightclub. She worries that, should TikTok be banned, other platforms would not sufficiently fill the void left behind. "I can put these videos on Instagram reels, and I do just for the cohesiveness, but I'm not sure how the algorithm really works,” she said. “I noticed that I get a lot more traction on TikTok."

Friends of hers have noted this traction. “They’re like, ‘Oh, you popped up on my For You page!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool,’” Stone said. “But, I'm sorry, on Instagram Reels, I don’t feel like I make connections the same way.”

How other TikTok users are affected

The app’s ban could disrupt how young people engage with the world around them. "For Gen Z, TikTok isn’t just entertainment — it’s their search engine, like a community builder and where they have true freedom for self-expression,” said Louise Millar, strategy director at Seed, an international marketing agency focused on young people. “Without it, kids in the U.S. might feel alone through isolation and miss out on the background of stories.”

TikTok also has served as a space for mutually supportive communities to convene around issues of importance to them, for instance around gender identity and expression — a feature that may be difficult to replicate on other platforms.

During the height of COVID-19 in 2020, Bobby Escobar, a junior majoring in social work at the University of Central Florida, turned to TikTok as a platform to advocate for social causes. His posts about LGBTQ+ issues, and videos about his personal life, gained him over 16,000 followers.

For TikTok users like Escobar, the app is more than a social network; it’s a gateway to a larger, supportive community. “When I was a teenager, TikTok was a place where I could see I wasn’t alone as an LGBTQ+ person,” he said. “There are even pages that highlight LGBTQ+ issues, such as trans rights and other political matters that are important to the community."

He believes banning the app would infringe on people's free speech, ability to express themselves, and for some even make a living. “Small businesses rely on TikTok for promotion and sales, especially through TikTok Shop, and banning it would take away their voice and opportunities," Escobar said.

The app became a space for Escobar to engage with others and share meaningful content, he continued. “Other apps have tried to copy TikTok’s style, such as Instagram with its Reels and Snapchat with its own features, but I’ve never found the same kind of content because TikTok’s algorithm is so personalized.”

Students, journalists and data privacy

Data privacy concerns around China’s ownership of TikTok lie at the heart of U.S. lawmakers’ push to ban the app.

Among respondents aged 18-29, more than half are at least somewhat concerned about how their data is being used by TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center study.

Craig Agranoff, a tech expert and adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University, shared his insights with CBS12 News in West Palm Beach, Florida, last year when discussions about potentially banning TikTok were gaining more attention. His concerns went beyond the time spent on social media, and extended to the exposure of private information.

“It’s very dangerous with the amount of data that the average person is giving this app,"  Agranoff said. “You might think it’s just your photos or your age, but you’re also sharing your location, who you share stuff with, and, most importantly, what influences you.”

In December 2022, TikTok admitted that it used the app to track reporters’ physical movements, data which in turn was accessed by ByteDance workers. ByteDance fired four of its employees who accessed the information, and its chief executive, Rubo Liang, apologized in an email to Forbes. “The public trust that we have spent huge efforts building is going to be significantly undermined by the misconduct of a few individuals,” he wrote. “I believe this situation will serve as a lesson to us all.”

That same month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned of national security concerns around TikTok, and in early 2023 the U.S. banned the app from all government-issued mobile devices.

What’s to come

“Even if TikTok disappears for American users, the trends won’t,” Escobar said. “People will find other options.”

In the latest reporting, TikTok has denied rumors that Elon Musk may buy the app. “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement.

Meanwhile, a potential alternative, RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, which is owned by a Shanghai-based company called Xingyin Information Technology, has climbed the app charts ahead of the possible ban. And despite losing out on TikTok, some users say they will avoid using Meta apps, including Instagram and Facebook.

"In the end, it's just an app, and clearly, it's become very important,” Escobar said. “ Hopefully it stays, but if not, it's not the end of the world."

Photo by visuals on Unsplash.