TikTok Is Now Officially Shut Down in United States

TikTok is now officially banned and unavailable in the United States, ensuring it can no longer be used by those who have the app downloaded. TikTok is one of the biggest platforms on the planet, but also one that is the subject of no shortage of controversy. TikTok is a relatively new app compared to its biggest competitors like Instagram, Twitter/X, and YouTube, but it has wasted no time in becoming extremely relevant. The short form video app allows people to view dozens, if not hundreds of videos in hours. Some of these are high-quality, well-produced videos, but some of them are what the internet would call “brainrot” and are just low-quality, but entertaining content.

TikTok has influenced tons of other apps into adopting its style of content. Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitter all have video-only feeds that are seemingly endless, allowing users to scroll to find new videos that use an algorithm to target them based on their interests and activity. TikTok arguably is the best at this and has a renowned algorithm that has managed to hone in on exactly what someone likes and retains users at a very high rate. With that said, the United States government has raised concerns about TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, and claimed the app is a national security concern. The U.S. believes TikTok is collecting data on its citizens and is a threat to the country.

TikTok Has Officially Been Banned

As a result of these concerns, the United States moved to ban TikTok. After a nearly five year process, the Supreme Court decided to officially ban the popular social media app unless ByteDance sold TikTok to a United States entity. If users try to sign into TikTok, they are greeted with a message alerting them to the ban and that they are working to try and resolve the issue with the United States government. TikTok claims that Trump will work with them to reverse the ban, but for now, the app is unusable. Similarly, TikTok is no longer available on the App Store.

The message reads: “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

The shut down comes after TikTok had warned users the ban was imminent. There has been a lot of back and forth over whether TikTok would budge, whether the government would actually follow through on its punishment, or if this would all get undone by President-elect Donald Trump, but it has officially happened. It’s possible users will find a workaround to the ban via a VPN, but we encourage you to take caution if you try to find a way to use TikTok in the United States following the ban. Given a law was passed to get rid of the app, it would be illegal to use a VPN as you’re circumventing the law. Do this at your own risk.

Will TikTok Be Unbanned?

With that said, Donald Trump is expected to give TikTok a 90-day extension to find a buyer once he’s inaugurated this coming week. Whether that would mean TikTok can be used in the United States again right away is unclear. Either way, it seems likely TikTok will return to the States eventually, but we’ll just have to wait and see when that actually happens. There are a number of American parties interested in taking control of TikTok including Mr. Beast, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and more. There’s even rumors that Elon Musk had interest, but TikTok denied these claims. It’s a highly lucrative platform, so whoever takes control of it will benefit massively.

In the meantime, TikTok users will just have to sit tight and hope things work out. Of course, Instagram has copied TikTok almost bar for bar, so if users are really in need of that quick dopamine hit, they can find very similar content (if not the exact same) over on the Meta-owned app.