Opinion | How 12 Americans See Life After Watching a Lot of TikTok

Over the past decade, how Americans receive and share information has remarkably changed. Social media has led to a cultural panic; there have been debates about addiction, attention spans, political influence, mental health and the way people receive news and information, especially among teens. Much of that has focused on TikTok, which has become the dominant app for millions of Americans.

A lot of people are torn about our new reality, however. Few seem to have the exact relationship they want with their phones. They love the entertainment and connectivity social media brings to waiting for the bus or trying to fix something at home but hate the doomscroll, and that includes the 12 heavy TikTok users in our latest Times Opinion focus group. We spoke with them about how they use the app, what kind of news they see there, President Trump, China and the app’s prospective U.S. ban.

The participants, of various ages and from different regions of the country and backgrounds, had the kinds of thoughts about how central phones are to our lives and tensions that might reflect how you feel. They love TikTok and social media for various reasons. Yet the same people also said they found it “consuming,” “addicting” and occasionally “toxic.” They wanted to cut back sometimes but then felt out of it. “There’s the side where if you are staying away, I don’t really know what’s going on,” said one participant about his occasional efforts to take a break. “I’m not informed.”

The participants said they didn’t want the app to be banned, but many shook their heads and described different worries when asked if they wanted their children to use the app. This is our new reality, and many people are trying to sort out how exactly to balance where to go from here.

And then there’s the ban. Last year Congress passed a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. business to an American company or stop operating in the United States, citing national security concerns. And for a day in January, TikTok shut down.

Multiple participants said they had joined RedNote, another Chinese app, in the wake of the ban; some described a feeling of loss while using the app, imagining working to recreate the TikTok experience with a fresh algorithm.

There’s a history of disallowing foreign ownership of media companies in the United States. But TikTok is used by more than 100 million Americans, and forcing its sale or banning it is a big step. There has been little public campaigning by politicians to explain why they did so. It’s not clear that many people who use TikTok day in, day out, have heard the national security rationale — or buy it if they have.