Americans don’t want to ban TikTok anymore

TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew has testified before Congress on multiple occasions.

Fewer Americans want to ban TikTok than did a year ago, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

While half of US adults supported a TikTok ban in March 2023, now just one in three (32%) say they want a government ban. And 28% of respondents surveyed by Pew in July and August said they oppose a ban, up from 22% in March 2023. Thirty-nine percent of respondents in this recent survey said they weren’t sure.

The decline in support for a TikTok ban is occurring across party lines. The share of Republicans who want to kick out TikTok dropped from 60% in March 2023 to 42% in the July and August survey. Those numbers fell from 43% to 24% over the same time period among Democrats. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been active on TikTok this election cycle as the app has emerged as an important news source for young Americans.

Ultimately, the shift in support for a ban may not matter. President Joe Biden in April signed a bill into law that gives TikTok’s owner ByteDance until January to divest from its US apps or face removal from Apple and Google Play app stores.

The law, bundled into a foreign aid package, was the culmination of a multiyear push to ban or force a sale of TikTok. US officials in both parties have raised concerns that ByteDance — which is headquartered in Beijing — could be forced to share US user data with the Chinese Communist Party in order to comply with an intelligence law. Some have raised concerns that TikTok could be used as a tool to spread information favorable to the Chinese government. The US government hasn’t provided evidence to the public to demonstrate that either action has transpired.

TikTok is currently challenging the divest-or-ban law, but faces an uphill battle in the courts as it seeks to combat Congress’ national security argument with a free speech defense.

“The First Amendment is the trump card that basically allows you to prevail if you can plausibly make a First-Amendment argument,” G.S. Hans, an associate clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School and associate director of its First-Amendment clinic, told B-17 in April. “National security also is a trump card, and the government often wins when it claims that. The question for me is, which trump card does the court think is more valuable?”

Despite a challenging road ahead for the short-video app, half of US adults told Pew they thought it was unlikely that TikTok would be banned. Thirty-one percent of respondents said a ban was likely, and 19% weren’t sure either way.

The outcome of the 2024 presidential election will play a role in TikTok’s future in the US, as the divest-or-ban bill has a clause allowing the president to extend its divestment deadline by 90 days. Former President Trump once sought to ban or force a sale of TikTok, but recently flip-flopped on the issue. Vice President Harris hasn’t shared a position on the TikTok ban.

Support for keeping TikTok around was much stronger among people who actually used the app versus those who don’t have it on their phones, according to Pew’s survey.

While just 10% of US adult TikTok users supported a government ban in the July and August survey, 42% of US adults who said they didn’t use the app supported a ban.