Written by Lura Merkle, Kiana Imperial, and Julie Wa
Since January 2025 is coming to an end, let’s talk about what has happened so far. Trump has entered the White House as president for his second term, most likely some people’s birthdays have happened, but let’s talk about one of the most devastating things so far and then one of the most happiest things to happen in this year: the TikTok ban.
For a little background information, in April of 2024, the government decided that it was unsafe for American citizens to own TikTok on their phones. They said that it stole their information and it was a privacy regulation. So, they set a ban in motion for TikTok.
All of the previous bans that happened for TikTok were then canceled by the House of Representatives and or the Senate, but this one made it all the way to the White House. They had talked with the people who own TikTok and had gotten information from them as to why it was a good thing or why it was a bad thing.
Then in the fourth quarter of 2024, they announced that January 19, 2025, is when the TikTok ban would go into place. Citizens all over America started getting worried about what would happen to their poor phones when TikTok was erased. Most people made more TikToks talking about it, others just watched it and let it rest in peace, but when January 18 came around, TikTok started acting up.
At around 11:00 pm, a screen would show up on their phone saying sorry our app is down right now, we are trying to fix the issue. You cannot scroll, you could not look at your profile, you could not do anything on TikTok. You just had to close the app or look at the details following the information. Most people were devastated by the reality that happened. In the next morning when they went to check on their phones from reflex, and they realize that this had become true. Following the hours of no TikTok, at around 2 o’clock on January 19, most people started realizing TikTok was back up and acting normal.
It was then most people realize that they could go on their profiles and look at all their favorites and that they didn’t have to save a ton of videos and that they could scroll on TikTok like normal. They could like, follow, and share videos. Most people then started to make more videos about how they are thanking Trump for saving their TikTok and how they can have it back again.
