TikTok Ban Gives Social Media Addicts A Chance At Sobriety

As of Sunday, a law effectively outlawing the Chinese-owned app TikTok from use in the U.S. is in effect which gives hundreds of millions of Americans the opportunity to put down their phones and go touch grass. The question is, will they?

Americans who tried to spend their Saturday nights “rotting” by aimlessly flipping through cringey dance videos, satirical skits, influencers’ sneaky brand deal ads, and everything in between were abruptly interrupted by a message warning that TikTok no longer had permission to operate in the U.S.

“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the popup states, blocking anyone from accessing any of the app’s videos or editing features. “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

The company expressed optimism that incoming President Donald Trump “will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” something Trump affirmed he will use his executive power to do on Inauguration Day. Yet TikTok still did not specify how it planned to comply with the law banning “foreign adversary-controlled applications.”

At this time, TikTok addicts had a unique opportunity to use the ban to their advantage.

People who recognize they have a scrolling problem have tried in the past to remedy it by hiding Big Tech apps on their smartphone home screens, signing out, or even deleting their accounts. But to no avail. After all, the defining quality that makes an addiction an addiction is that the pull to return to outweighs most attempts to rid oneself of it.

TikTok’s indefinite inaccessibility status, however, means scrollers’ hands are literally forced away from the itch to open the black, pink, and aquamarine music note box on their screens every time they unlock their pocket devices — something people so serious about their scrolling problems that they try to use placeholders like screen time limits and even physical lockboxes could only dream of.

Instead of capitalizing on this opportunity, the masses flooded American-owned Big Tech feeds with complaints and even emotional eulogies for the app that has maintained an inextinguishable presence in social media scrollers’ lives.

Pulling up social media like the “clock” app has become such a compulsion for many of the third of U.S. adults who use it that they can’t even fill one evening without it. As soon as the TikTok ban went into effect, clip junkies who rebranded themselves as “TikTok refugees” flocked to other digital dopamine platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even RedNote, another Chinese-owned app literally named for communist dictator Mao Zedong’s little red book of quotations, to get their “feel good hormone” fix.

The TikTok ban provides the perfect pause for those users to repair some of the damage social media has wreaked on their minds and souls. They just have to be willing to resist other temptations out there to do it.

Is freeing up one’s time and resting one’s eyes easier said than done? Absolutely. But going offline for one weekend — or at least until Trump and TikTok figure out the future of the app — won’t kill anyone. In fact, it might save them.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.