By Erica Edman ‘21, Feature Editor

Lately, the app TikTok has consumed the lives of teenagers around the world. In the US alone, the app has over 30 million monthly users; of those users, 69% are from Generation Z (ages 16-24). While teens have spent countless hours on the app scrolling through videos or learning the latest dance trends, they haven’t taken much time to learn who’s behind this huge platform. However, if you have downloaded TikTok, it is worth your time to learn about the company behind it. Turns out, the creator of the app is a Chinese company known as ByteDance. Worth over 78 billion dollars, ByteDance is considered the most valuable private company in the world. ByteDance is not only the creator of TikTok, but also of many of the most popular short-video platforms around the world such as Helo (an Indian social media app), Vigo Video (formerly Hypstar), Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), BaBe (an Indonesian news and content app) and Huoshan (a Chinese short-form video app). 

After ByteDance bought Musical.ly for approximately one billion dollars in August of 2018 and merged the app with TikTok, TikTok skyrocketed in popularity and became ByteDance’s most popular app. Shortly after this merger, ByteDance ran into legal trouble. In February 2019, the company agreed to pay 5.7 million dollars to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). ByteDance was charged with illegally collecting information about children 13 years or under, which included names, email addresses, and locations. The FTC stated that their investigation of Musical.ly “uncovered disturbing practices, including collecting and exposing the location” of children. After the settlement, ByteDance made a statement claiming that they will take steps to ensure the privacy of their users. 

Recently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews the effects of foreign investments on national security, has begun to investigate ByteDance. In October 2019, Senator Tom Cotton and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for a national security probe. Cotton and Schumer were concerned that ByteDance, being a Chinese company, was censoring content for its American users and possibly storing private information of Americans. Two months later, the United States Army and Navy banned the use of TikTok for all its soldiers and sailors, declaring the app a security threat. 

Does this all mean that you should delete TikTok off of your phone? To be honest, I have no idea. And to be completely honest, I probably won’t delete it. But I think this says more about the generation I’m a part of than myself. We Generation Z-ers prioritize convenience over privacy. We’re so immersed in the language of social media that the thought of some large, mysterious corporation sneaking around our iPhones doesn’t seem all that scary. But maybe it’s important to think about how this crazy internet experiment has never been done before, and how we are the guinea pigs of the effects of growing up with social media. So whether downloading TikTok leads to major consequences, I guess we’ll find out in the future.