CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Late last week, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the U.S. House Committee for Energy and Commerce.
The app is already banned on government-owned devices. But Thursday’s hearing has left some people wondering if it could also be banned on all devices nationwide.
UNC senior Kenny Xu said that if access to TikTok was restricted, he would turn to alternatives like Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts.
““I don’t prefer Instagram Reels, but I think that it’s a good enough substitute,” he said.
UNC freshman Laura Brown said that she would use a VPN to attempt to get around the block.
““I would definitely use a VPN, because I wouldn’t let that stop me,” she said.
Others said that they wouldn’t feel strongly if TikTok was taken away. UNC junior Luke Farinelli said that he deleted the app to focus on studying for the MCAT.
“They have definitely perfected that algorithm to suck as much time out of my life as possible, and I don’t have enough time to give them,” he said. “So I just had to cut it out.”
UNC senior Yusri Souissi said that he has scrolled on TikTok for thousands of hours.
“Short form content is too addictive, you know?” he said. “And I feel like when I open the app, I just lose time.”
TikTok is used by a younger demographic compared to similar social media apps, with 38.9 percent of users aged between 18 and 24. To give some perspective, Instagram has 30.8 percent and Youtube has 15 percent of users in the same age range.
As a result of this demographic, some students felt that the questions asked in the congressional hearing were out-of-touch.
“I thought it was kind of funny how bad the questions were from some of the U.S. representatives,” Xu said. “It was a lot of older people who I think don’t really understand how phones and like apps work.”
Brown said she thought the questions were ridiculous.
“They were like, ‘does it connect to WiFi?’ Like, of course it does, it’s an app,” she said.
UNC junior Isabella Rogers said that she primarily uses the app to keep up with current events and to look at cat videos.
“For me personally, I find things on TikTok that I relate to all the time,” she said. “So I feel like taking that away is not going to be good. I think that Congress has so many more important things to worry about than taking TikTok away.”
Farinelli said that he didn’t expect TikTok to come under fire on a national scale.
“I think it’s just interesting how Congress picks and chooses its battles for what I would see as kind of a useless attack,” he said. “It’s strange that out of all of the issues that we’re faced with today, this is really the thing that’s getting the most attention.”