With the ongoing tech war between the United States and China, President Joe Biden signed a law banning the popular video-sharing app TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it within a year. This development marks the most significant threat yet to TikTok’s presence in the U.S., impacting its 170 million American users (nytimes.com).
The newly signed law stipulates that ByteDance must divest its stake in TikTok within nine months, with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. This time frame suggests that it would be at least a year before the ban could take effect.
For the 170 million Americans who already have TikTok installed on their devices, the app will not immediately disappear. However, it will be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores, preventing new downloads and updates. Over time, the lack of updates could render the app unusable and potentially a security risk.
Now, it is undeniable that TikTok is the most used social media application used by teenagers from 13-18, the age of most high schoolers. Most high schoolers likely mindlessly scroll through TikTok instead of paying attention to their class. Of course, the U.S. government cares more about data being leaked to the Chinese government, so the previously mentioned reason probably was not even considered while trying to ban TikTok. Anyways, millions of high schoolers across the nation will be forced to actually pay attention to their class. This brings up the question: how much time do high school students spend on TikTok over paying attention?
According to senior Leo Wong, he averages 11 hours and 37 minutes per day. Their most used app is TikTok taking 15 hours and 10 minutes of his weekly hours. Senior Karyssa Nguyen stated they average 4 hours and 50 minutes on their phone per day. Her most used app is TikTok with 10 hours and 27 minutes. According to senior Morgan Shi, they average 6 hours and 55 minutes per day. Their most used app is Instagram with 10 hours and 7 minutes, followed by bilibili at 8 hours and 16 minutes, and finally TikTok with 3 hours and 6 minutes.
Based on these three students, it is clear TikTok is a very time-consuming application detrimental to people’s attention during class. Of the three, two averaged over 10 hours on TikTok in a week. Of course, that also considers after school and the weekends, but 10 hours is still a lot of time. One of these anonymous students stated, “Lately I have just been sitting in class and I’m just rotting on my phone.” So, despite there being times outside of school when TikTok is used, TikTok is an app still used by students to distract themselves from their classes.
Despite TikTok being a very big distraction, the third student stated they spend more hours on other applications like Instagram and bilibili. TikTok is not solely the problem affecting students’ attention spans. Maybe our parents were right, it just might be that damn phone.
