There’s no denying it: The vibes on TikTok have soured.
The Chinese-owned app went dark over the weekend before it was disconcertingly resurrected just a few hours later, a cheery pop-up pushed to its 170 million-plus American users: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” Yikes. So many of us had hoped that TikTok would get saved somehow — but did we want it saved like this?
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order delaying the enforcement of the app’s federal ban by 75 days, suggesting that the U.S. government should get to own half of TikTok’s business in exchange for keeping the app alive. But who knows whether that will happen. My feed has been flooded with panicked posts and conspiracy theories, people asking each other whether the algorithm feels fundamentally different now, something feels wrong, something feels off. As someone who’s been (embarrassingly) a bit of a TikTok power user these last few years, I’m surprised to find myself feeling somewhat ambivalent about its ultimate fate. For one thing, I don’t love the idea of sharing my most intimate thoughts (not to mention my personal data) with a company pushing Trump propaganda, whose CEO Shou Zi Chew was at his inauguration, sitting not too far away from the new tech oligarchy assembled on the dais. But it’s not just that. The temporary shutdown invited an uncomfortable period of introspection, as I thought back on the many hours of my one wild and precious life I’d spent scrolling my way to oblivion.
It feels as though a lot of TikTokers are grieving the glory days of the early 2020s, when the app felt more like our friend, albeit one who harvested our data and tracked our every move across the web. When the app first gained popularity in the U.S., we were all coping with a global pandemic. It’s a little strange when you think about it: mass nostalgia for a period in which pretty much everyone was extremely unwell.
I dealt with my own pandemic stress, in part, by spending a bunch of money I didn’t actually have making my apartment into a cozy, luxurious haven: fancy linens, original artwork, trendy furniture. Fuck it, I thought, the world is ending! I might as well be as comfortable as possible.
But the world didn’t end. And it won’t anytime soon — even though the terrible vibes on TikTok and in general right now can make it feel that way.
A lot of young adults who spent their prime developmental and socializing years under lockdown have been hesitant if not downright opposed to rejoining a life lived in public. I’m not talking about immunocompromised people who have good reason to keep staying home in a country that’s failed to properly deal with COVID’s continued existence, but rather people who believe themselves to be biologically or psychologically hardwired in a way that makes them unsuited for IRL human contact.
I saw a video reposted by one of my TikTok friends recently about neurodivergence and friendships. The 20-something OP talks about enjoying time by themselves, saying they “lack the energy and motivation” to build friendships. “A lot of my problems stem from being lonely and isolated,” they say, but they keep repeating that if they were at a party, they’re sure they’d be miserable there, too. The comments are filled with agreement: “I feel fomo for a life I could have had. I would love to feel comfortable in social spaces and be able to maintain a group of friends, but I know I never will and I would just get burnt out.”
These are the kinds of TikToks that Twitter loves to make fun of (“OMG you people can’t do anything”), but posts like this break my heart. I, too, struggle to force myself out of the house a lot of the time, even though I know it would do me good. A lot of us don’t like huge parties, or even being around more than one or two friends at once. But humans are social animals. We quite literally need each other, other people, in all their messy, human glory, to survive. Americans are now spending more time alone than ever, and apps like TikTok help keep us at home, where we’re safe and comfortable but not necessarily challenged or changed, lost in the endless scroll. So many of us, myself included, have grown far too dependent on these apps to shape the contours of our lives.
In those brief few hours when TikTok went dark, I checked in on Instagram Reels out of morbid curiosity, having barely spent any time there before, and I mostly found it terribly depressing: lesbian discourse by 22-year-olds I’d already exhausted with my friends ten years ago; really weird Christian content; so many weight-loss ads. If TikTok never came back, I knew I wouldn’t get sucked into Instagram instead, and none of the other apps people have bandied about as alternatives have sparked my interest either. So, in the quiet of the afternoon, I worked up a master plan of all the things I could do now with my time spent far, far away from my phone. I’d finally set up the craft room I’d long dreamed of! I’d exercise! I’d cook more!
Earlier that day, I’d been lamenting all the good friends I’d made on TikTok who I might never see again, online or otherwise; the animal rescues I followed who would struggle to build up support networks elsewhere; the comedians, writers, and artists who’d been the colorful background characters of my life these past five years. But once I started writing down all the different possibilities for filling my newfound time, I mostly just felt … relieved. I was free.
It had taken the app’s temporary disappearance for me to reckon with one of the things about it that gives me the biggest ick. The influencers crying over what they thought was their lost livelihoods were stark reminders that they don’t actually work for themselves — they work for ByteDance. And they’re uncompensated laborers without any rights. As are all of us who post to social media, where we individual humans are the content as well as the product — our data sold to the highest bidder; our priceless hours spent on earth converted directly to ad dollars to make the superwealthy even richer. And though its enormous reach has proved powerful in terms of raising awareness about cascading global disasters — not least the genocide in Gaza — it’s concerning how many people rely on an app for most or all of their news consumption when random content creators aren’t reporters; they’re floating heads over a green screen misinterpreting stories written by actual journalists, if they’re bothering to cite original reporting at all.
Mostly, though, I’m thinking about stepping back because I’ve devoted too much of my attention, that priceless and finite resource, to an addictive algorithm that’s proven to have endangered children’s mental and physical health, prioritizes “attractive” people, promotes a paranoid surveillance culture, and is powered by any number of nefarious agendas. For years, I’ve let myself self-soothe with mindless consumption when it comes to both my money and my time. Maybe you have, too. But we can make different kinds of choices.