Students, tell us what you think about efforts to ban TikTok

Close up two sets of teenage hands one is holing a cellphone and the other is nearby. There is a laptop and notebooks on the wooden table below their hands.
In one recent survey, about two-thirds of U.S. teenagers reported using TikTok. YouTube was the most popular site. (The Good Brigade / Getty Images)

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

Congress is trying to ban TikTok. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution that gives TikTok owner Byte Dance, a Beijing-based tech company, six months to sell the app or see it banned in the United States. Lawmakers have raised data privacy and national security concerns because of the foreign ownership of such an influential social media app. Opponents of a ban say there is nothing unique about TikTok — that all social media platforms have positive and negative features.

About two-thirds of U.S. teens say they use TikTok, according to Pew Research Center, with 17% saying they are on the app almost constantly. While there are big worries about the mental health impacts of social media use, people also use TikTok as a creative outlet and to stay connected with friends.

We want to hear from students about how a TikTok ban would affect them.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey below, and let us know if we can follow up with you. We’ll keep your information confidential, and only publish your answers if you tell us it’s OK.

Not a student but know one who might have something to say? Please send them this survey.

Having trouble viewing the form? Click here.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.


The Latest

Students in juvenile detention often don’t receive required special education support and struggle to reengage with school when they’re released.

A group of seven mothers who serve as parent mentors in Chicago Public Schools are trying to help families in their communities amid the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement in Chicago.

The request for a Supreme Court hearing comes about six weeks after a federal appeals court ruled against the Catholic preschools.

Districts must agree to state investigations if a mass casualty event happens in order to get the funds.

Recent data doesn’t definitively prove all closings lead to higher gun violence, but they do show areas where it worsened after closure that can’t be explained by citywide spikes.

Each of the schools at risk of closing this year will have a meeting over the next two months. The first will be at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 19 at Frayser-Corning Elementary School.