The TikTok Ban's Impact on the LGBTQ Community

The US Senate passed a bill on Wednesday signed by President Biden to ban TikTok due to security concerns, with the exception of the app being sold. This means that if the app isn’t sold to a different company, it will be banned on all U.S. app stores. According to The New York Times, “Lawmakers in numerous countries have expressed concerns that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, may expose sensitive user data” (Maheshwari). The bill will allow ByteDance, the conglomerate of TikTok, nine months to get bought, with three more months if a sale is underway, but the app will be banned if it doesn’t get sold. While TikTok does have some harmful consequences, such as lowering people's attention spans, echo chambers, and privacy concerns, the app has allowed many people to find online communities and subcultures. Banning the app could affect the visibility and break away connections in these communities, which is a major loss.

 Whether someone is interested in gaming, cooking, a specific music artist or genre, political activism, fashion, or more, people can find their niche on TikTok, and it’s an accessible way to find community and realize you are not alone. This is especially true for racial and ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQ community. TikTok connects people from all over the world and gives people a space to access important information and build relationships with others who have similar identity experiences. TikTok helped me feel less alone with being queer and encouraged me to feel more confident in myself through the relationships I built on the app. With the potential TikTok ban floating in the front of many people's minds, I wanted to reflect on my experience because TikTok helped me grow into myself. I’d hate not to let other people have access to the experience I had because of a governmental ban.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I downloaded TikTok out of pure boredom. I didn’t expect to learn anything new about myself through the app; I just needed to find something to entertain myself with because I was sick of watching the same TV shows over and over again. At first, I had a private account with my close friends, but then I decided to switch to a public account because I wanted to meet new people since I couldn’t hang out with my friends at school due to quarantine. In the beginning, I would just post cringey lip-synch videos, but then I started posting LGBTQ content with anything ranging from comedy videos to queer artist recommendations. Within the first week of posting publicly, a girl messaged me on the app and told me that one of my videos inspired her to come out to her parents. I had no idea how a 15-second video I made could have that impact on someone, but that experience significantly touched me. I felt inspired to continue posting LGBTQ content because I wanted to help people and give people the representation that I wished I had on the internet when I was younger. 

I began posting on the app weekly, and one day I posted a video to start a group chat for non-men queer people to connect in. I got over 500 comments on the video of people wanting to join the group chat and was very surprised by the number of people interested. I chose 25 random accounts that commented and made a group chat. The first thing we did was share where we are from. There were people in the group chat from Norway, Amsterdam, and London, and people from all over the United States from Alabama to California to Massachusetts. The group chat consisted of queer people of different backgrounds and all different types of presentations, sexualities, and experiences. One person in the group chat was kicked out of their house for being gay, and we helped them find support; another girl didn’t know or have any LGBTQ friends in real life and expressed that the group chat really helped her feel more comfortable in her sexuality. The group chat lasted for over two years, and we were able to support each other during the isolating time of the pandemic and build strong connections.

We all became internet friends and would FaceTime, text, and comment on each other's posts. It felt very affirming to get support from other people who shared experiences with me, although we lived far from each other. I’m not alone in this experience, as the Trevor Project CEO Amit Paley said in a Washington Post article, “We see a lot of examples where, on TikTok, LGBTQ youth are getting support…And that is so important because there are many LGBTQ youth in this country who are not able to get support where they physically are” (The Washington Post). As I got deeper into LGBTQ TikTok, I learned more about what being non-binary is and was able to see people on the app who looked like me and expressed gender experiences that felt similar to mine. That helped me feel validated and learn about myself. I was also very inspired by different queer creators outfits on the app, and that helped me come into a style that feels genuine to me. As I continued to post on TikTok, a few videos went viral, allowing me to connect with new people. I was interviewed by a girl from Amsterdam about queer representation on TikTok, and I was able to inspire an influencer from Arizona to come out as transgender, who now has over 7 million followers. 

Although most of my videos were silly and felt meaningless to me, I was able to meet so many interesting people on TikTok, and it helped me accept my identity and learn more about myself. I continue to stay in touch with some of the friends I met on TikTok and have had the chance to meet some of them in real life. It’s sad to think about the app running out of time since, according to CNN, “The bill that Biden signed gives TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do so would lead to significant consequences: TikTok would be prohibited from US app stores and from ‘internet hosting services’ that support it” (Fung). While TikTok is getting closer to being banned, I think people should push the government to consider the benefits of TikTok because while the app may have issues, it has changed many people's lives. The amount of support, acceptance, and community the app allows for on a global scale will be difficult to replace on another platform.