Here’s a question I have not seen raised regarding the bill that passed the House yesterday giving TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to spin off its American operation or be banned from operating in this country.
Consider these two facts: 1) the demographics of most of TikTok’s users are young. According to Statista (as of December, 2022), 69% of 18-19 year olds and 56% of 20-29 year olds were regular TikTok users; and 2) six months from now it will be the middle of September, just six weeks before Election Day.
President Biden has said he’ll sign the legislation if it passes the Senate and ends up on his desk — even though his own campaign has recently begun posting videos on TikTok. Might having their favorite social media platform taken away by order of the US government give younger voters an excuse to not vote for Biden in November?
Even though the bill is being rushed through Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan consensus, will those voters blame the ban on their legislative representatives up for reelection (whose names they don’t even know) or the man whose signature will make it law?