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Visualizing the Share of Americans Supporting the TikTok Ban
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In April, 80% of Congress voted to ban TikTok, citing national security concerns over its use in surveilling American user data.
Under this legislation, it requires its Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell the company to a U.S. firm within a year, or distribution across U.S. store apps will be removed. While this law has been criticized for regulatory overreach, others say that TikTok is being used as a Trojan horse to serve the aims of a foreign adversary.
This graphic shows the share of Americans supporting the TikTok ban by political party, based on data from the Pew Research Center.
American Support for TikTok Ban is Waning
Today, TikTok is used by 170 million Americans, while 14% regularly got their news from the app last year.
Given its dominance, U.S. lawmakers have cracked down on the app, claiming that it can be used to manipulate content that is seen by U.S. users under direction from the Chinese government. While half of U.S. adults surveyed said they supported the ban last year, this has significantly declined to 32%, with drops across both Democrat and Republicans.
| Percent of U.S. Adults Who Support Banning | Democrat | Republican | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2023 | 43% | 60% | 50% |
| Sept-Oct 2023 | 29% | 50% | 38% |
| July-Aug 2024 | 24% | 42% | 32% |
As the above table shows, a higher share of Republicans (42%) say they support the TikTok ban compared to Democrats (24%).
When it comes to people who use the app, just 10% support the ban in contrast to 42% of U.S. adults who don’t use the app. Yet across both groups, support for the ban has declined notably since March 2023.
While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has recently appeared skeptical during TikTok’s efforts to challenge the legislation, half of Americans doubt that the ban will go through. ByteDance is required to sell TikTok by January 19, but the company states that the law violates the First Amendment, and that security concerns are speculative.
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