What would a TikTok ban imply for increased ed?
Lower than two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second time period, he’s already testing the boundaries of govt energy.
As considered one of his first actions in workplace, he wielded that energy to renew People’ entry to TikTok—the favored Chinese language-owned short-form video app 47 p.c of faculty college students use each day—after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom upheld a legislation banning it.

Final April, Congress banned corporations from distributing, sustaining or updating a “international adversary managed utility,” particularly these “operated, instantly or not directly” by TikTok or its dad or mum firm, ByteDance Ltd. In consequence, TikTok went darkish for about 12 hours two days earlier than Trump, who had beforehand supported the thought of a TikTok ban, took workplace. Nearly instantly after his inauguration, he issued an govt order halting enforcement of the ban for 75 days, whereas the administration determines “the suitable course ahead in an orderly approach that protects nationwide safety whereas avoiding an abrupt shutdown” of TikTok.
Some specialists say Trump’s order falls into murky authorized territory, and TikTok’s destiny within the U.S. stays unclear. However banning a social media app that 170 million People use as a instrument for self-expression and self-promotion would have quite a few implications for each school college students and their establishments. A 2022 examine discovered two-thirds of youngsters have been utilizing TikTok to devour a variety of knowledge, together with information, tutorials, leisure and ads, making it a significant recruiting instrument for faculties.
“TikTok represents a pivotal transition level between what was the social media–pushed increased ed of the final 15 years and now the factitious intelligence–powered, immersive digital future that’s going to outline the following decade,” mentioned J. Israel Balderas, an assistant professor of journalism at Elon College and a lawyer specializing in First Modification instances. “TikTok isn’t only a social media platform someway caught on this geopolitical battle. It represents a transition level in digital historical past.”
Final week, Inside Greater Ed requested Balderas 5 questions on what a TikTok ban would imply for college students, college and establishments. The interview has been edited for concision and readability.
1. What are the implications of a TikTok ban for the tradition of upper training?
TikTok has develop into a dominant area for scholar expression, activism and social engagement. For professors, it additionally has develop into a spot of analysis and AI literacy. Dropping the platform signifies that scholar organizers would lose a mobilization instrument. TikTok has performed a important position, not simply in campus activism—from political actions to social justice campaigns—however it has additionally been a approach for others to speak and play a job within the market of concepts.
What’s most regarding to me is the potential chilling impact on scholar expression. College students will begin to query whether or not different digital areas will face related crackdowns. For instance, if TikTok may be banned beneath the guise of nationwide safety, what’s going to occur to different foreign-owned or politically delicate platforms? Will they be subsequent?
Universities would additionally lose a major storytelling platform. You’ve got campus life blogs; you have got student-run media accounts. TikTok permits establishments and college students to form their narrative in a approach that no different platform presently permits.
2. Do you assume there’s justification for a TikTok ban?
It will depend on the way you weigh nationwide safety dangers versus free speech rights. The Chinese language authorities may probably use TikTok’s suggestion engine to form political discourse, suppress content material and even promote sure narratives. However we’ve been right here earlier than with that. We have been right here in 1919 with Schenck v. United States and Abrams v. United States that questioned affect from socialists and communists. What we found is that {the marketplace} of concepts principle works and the reality rises.
Whereas the nationwide safety argument is legitimate, why is TikTok being singled out when U.S.-based platforms with equally invasive knowledge practices, like Meta, Google and X, stay untouched? The First Modification doesn’t defend the businesses from regulation, however it does defend People’ proper to entry info.
J. Israel Balderas is a journalism professor at Elon College and a First Modification lawyer.
3. May such a ban actually be enforced? What may school college students do to get round it?
Banning a social media app in a free society is extremely tough.
Massive tech being so highly effective and so near energy in Washington additionally creates a really grey authorized space, as a result of Apple and Google management entry to cellular apps. In the event that they refuse to reinstate TikTok, then enforcement turns into a de facto actuality even with out the federal government instantly blocking entry. However what we noticed earlier this month, with Trump’s intervention to reinstate TikTok, exhibits that enforcement may be overridden by govt energy. So, it’s unclear how constantly a ban could possibly be utilized, however enforcement of a ban is way extra sophisticated than both the courts or Congress can anticipate.
Faculty college students are digital natives, they usually adapt to those issues by bypassing restrictions. They’ll use VPNs [virtual private networks], that are already extensively utilized in nations with restricted web legal guidelines, like China. College students may additionally obtain it from unofficial sources, as a substitute of the normal app shops. They’ll additionally use different apps, like the opposite, more and more common Chinese language-owned app, RedNote.
Someone will discover an rising app, particularly now on the planet of AI, the place AI is open supply. You’ll be able to take the spine of TikTok, and with AI and correct coding you possibly can create the identical form of surroundings as TikTok. So what number of extra clones on the market would that be, proper?
4. How would a TikTok ban form faculties’ digital literacy efforts within the age of AI?
A TikTok ban could be a blow to digital literacy and AI training. That is the second once we should be speaking about AI training and what it means for the workforce, college students and us as college members, who’re educating that it’s not nearly details and data. It’s about educating college students learn how to ask the fitting questions and learn how to join the dots.
TikTok opens the door to asking college students what it’s the algorithm is aware of about you, if that’s an moral factor and if they need it. It’s not about shaming college students for his or her selections. It’s about educating them to assume critically about what they’re doing after which letting them resolve what it means for his or her lives and relationships.
If the federal government can resolve what content material is nice or unhealthy for the inhabitants, we’d must rethink what it means to have AI literacy within the curriculum.
5. TikTok is caught in a geopolitical crossfire. Is there a teachable second in all of this?
The truth that we’re having these conversations is one of the best a part of this whole fiasco. As a result of college students are questioning if the federal government can actually do these items. What in regards to the future? What about AI? Will the federal government be capable of say that it’s not suppressing speech, however simply suppressing the one who’s writing these codes or the one who’s placing these algorithms into {the marketplace}? College students are no less than making an attempt to determine what’s the position the federal government will play going ahead in the case of concepts that aren’t common.
In the event that they’re being extra important about these issues, then as a professor, I’ve finished my job.