Ember Duke | layout editor

Over the last five years, speculation has circulated over a national ban of the social media platform “TikTok,” which allows influencers, content creators and business owners an easy way to target key consumer demographics. It appears now, in 2025, that the threat to the platform’s viability in the U.S. looms near and is closing in fast.

With over 150 million American users, according to the TikTok company website, the app is a hub for commerce and a source of income and community for many Pittsburgh people.

Arjun Manjunath is a content creator and senior in the University of Pittsburgh’s College of Business Administration and is pursuing a BSBA with a marketing concentration. He is known for his viral “Romanticizing Pittsburgh” videos. Manjunath said his experience with TikTok has created opportunities for him. He has worked with brands like Microsoft and the Steelers, used his content in his portfolio and interned with TikTok in New York last summer.

“From a creator’s perspective, it’s like everyone has the ability to make their name known, have a community where they feel like someone’s listening, or they have a space to share their own thoughts,” he said. “I feel like that’s not something that people really had before.”

Despite TikTok’s many American users, the U.S. Senate passed bipartisan legislation calling for TikTok to divest from its parent company ByteDance, due to privacy concerns regarding the Chinese government’s access to nonpublic user information in April, according to the Associated Press.

The legislation was later approved by the Biden administration, allowing ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok to American owners, according to CBS.

Since hearing about a potential ban, Manjunath has begun cross posting on several platforms including Instagram, YouTube shorts and Snapchat shorts.

His online presence acts similar to a part-time job, he said, with the bulk of his income coming from collaborations he has had, which help him pay for living expenses and tuition.

“[TikTok] just had the ability to reach more people … the app had such an established creator economy,” he said. “There was Tik Tok shop, there was affiliate marketing, and … TikTok ad space. You could just give a code to the brands that you were working with and they could boost your video for you.”

For Abby Wendt, Duquesne senior business marketing major and owner of swimwear brand European Summer, TikTok is part of her business model – largely because of its ability to push content to a wider audience, she said. She relies on the platform for advertising as well as selling directly through the TikTok shop, where the majority of her sales came from last year.

“One thing that I like about TikTok shop … is you can see the correlation of people who saw your video and then people who purchased it,” she said. “On Instagram, you can see views and you can see engagement, but you can’t necessarily see who saw it and then bought something.”

Recently, she has been driving more traffic to her Instagram and plans to take a similar content approach to the one that worked for her on TikTok – though she said she will miss being able to directly link products to a video.

“I actually stopped putting money into TikTok advertising,” Wendt said. “I used to run some ads, but this season, pre-launch, I’m not going to just because it’s a waste of money if TikTok goes away.”

President-Elect Donald Trump originally opposed the app in 2020 by signing an executive order to prohibit transactions between ByteDance and U.S. citizens. However, Trump has since pushed for Congress to postpone the ban until after his inauguration claiming he could broker a compromise, according to Forbes.

Trump stated in a Truth Social post on Jan. 3 he wouldn’t want it banned alongside a graphic of his popularity on the platform. However, it would be a difficult road for Trump to walk back the ban if it is enacted before his inauguration date, according to Forbes.

Matt Gentile, founder and CEO of Pittsburgh based marketing agency, My BFF Social Media, said TikTok has “created an outstanding platform,” but he doesn’t think it is the end all be all for content creators.

“The creators that have made a business for themselves on the platform, if they have managed to create content that is attractive to the consumer via TikTok, then they’re certainly capable of creating content on Instagram reels or Facebook stories or YouTube shorts,” Gentile said.

Bela Pequignot, Duquesne senior finance major and owner of clothing brand Bela’s Threads, and her 60 brand ambassadors use TikTok to promote her clothing designs. In one instance, one of her brand ambassador’s videos gained approximately 1 million views and for two weeks, her sales skyrocketed. She said on the average day her engagement comes from a mix of social media platforms.

“TikTok has been a huge part of what’s gotten me to be able to shift to 40 states,” she said. “Tik Tok is such a great way for small businesses to get their brand out there to new eyes, and it would not help … having one less of a way to be able to market to new people.”

Hannah Kern, integrated marketing communications and digital media arts major at Duquesne, said she hasn’t been concerned with data privacy on the app.

Looking at her prospective career in social media marketing, she said she feels the industry will adapt to the ban.

“I feel like another platform will be created, or Instagram Reels is going to become more popular,” she said.

On Jan. 10, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from TikTok lawyers, a group of users who challenged the law and the Department of Justice regarding whether the legislation is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment. The decision to ban or not will then be made on Jan. 19.