Is the Clock ticking for TikTok
Here are two stories that tell you a lot about the state of media consumption in the United States. And it all revolves around TikTok. First is an analysis of the top social media trends.
The article doesn’t spell it out, but if you count the top trending items, more than half of the trending stories are from TikTok. By my account, 24 of the 44 stories dubbed the most popular are TikTok videos. (Yes, I do have an anal retentive streak in me and I actually counted them all after reading it because I was struck by the number of cites.)
Secondly, and you’ve already probably already heard about this, but the federal government and 34 states have banned the use of TikTok on all government devices. And why? Well, you probably already know this as well but it comes down to one word — China.
(Okay it’s a little more than one word.) Several politicians have called for banning it completely on all devices and one state (Montana) already has. The Montana ban is being challenged, and the federal ban was never enacted because of the constitutional free press issues involved.
Several other countries have also banned TikTok on government devices, including Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the European Union. Some countries have full bans on TikTok, including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal and Somalia. As you would expect, TikTok has launched a marketing counteroffensive with the major theme being that it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese Government.
Lastly for a little perspective, consider this: TikTok has 1 Billion users worldwide, just behind Instagram with 1.4 Billion, although Facebook is of course the dominant social media site with 3.3 Billion. But of those one billion users, 150 Million of them live in the United States. And for one last piece of perspective, that’s out of a total population of 331 Million, or put another way, nearly half the country.
