I have never been a fan of social media such as TikTok and Snapchat, which are very popular in the United States. One reason for this is that I grew up using a variety of social tools, and when I was a teenager, Instagram and Viber were the domination for young people in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, social media was not as important as everyone lived very close to each other and prioritized face-to-face interaction.
COVID-19 had a huge impact on our worldview, and by the end of the pandemic, I found myself surrounded by TikTokers and Snapchatters in the United States. Almost every friend at the University of Miami has his TikTok account and is active in TikTok culture, either by creating content to engage his audience or by passively scrolling through other people’s content. Participating in
Still, the importance of a tool, especially social media, in today’s world can’t be understood until it feels like its existence is threatened. hinting at the idea of ​​banning TikTok in the United States. Now, the U.S. government wants to tell my friend that TikTok is a national security issue and that he can no longer access the platform.
And while I may not care much about TikTok’s credibility, I do care about my belief in freedom of expression in the United States and the daily pressure to make politically driven decisions to maintain certain budgetary standards. We definitely care a lot about the mission of our public universities. And stay in the game. Governments and universities have forgotten their mission to serve students and their needs. It is outrageous to tell students and young people that they can change the world and then take away the tools to do so.
The future of the world rests in the hands of educators and those committed to making knowledge and truth accessible to others. Public universities, including Miami, need to be at the forefront of the process of creating change and not shy away from certain topics just because they are controversial due to America’s polarized environment. There is.
During spring break, I had the opportunity to meet professionally with several of Ohio State Senator Sherrod Brown’s interns and legislative aides. In our conversation, the topic of banning TikTok came up. As in the book, they shared “deep concerns” about the platform, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, and which the US has tried to acquire several times, but which the Chinese have rejected. I said that.
I asked how the senator plans to address free speech concerns and other aspects of the TikTok issue, other than that the senator is working for “the American people.” No specific plans were mentioned.
As I walked through Washington, DC, I couldn’t get this conversation out of my head. Who are the American people? Do they want TikTok banned? I thought that one day this problem would appear in our backyard as students. Auburn University, the University of Texas, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Alabama have all banned TikTok from their campus Wi-Fi networks.
This doesn’t really solve anything since many students just transfer to their personal network and continue using the app, but just trying to limit student audio usage is mind-boggling. While no one wants to suffer identity theft or have their information scrutinized, the concern is the implication that a ban is the only solution and that China is being targeted. about it.
If the ban were fully institutionalized, researchers, educators, and others interested in understanding the dynamics of making TikTok safer would be excluded from the picture. Nor did anyone mention how banning TikTok at public universities might change the rhetoric toward Chinese, Asian, and Asian American students. While stereotypes persist and the relationship between the United States and China is messy and complicated, the lives of students eager to learn and earn degrees are not.
The number of Chinese students in the United States has declined significantly, and Miami is also suffering the loss. In Ohio, this change is best exemplified by Senate Bill 83. According to the Washington Post, this paranoid view of Chinese students typically means they are subjected to extreme surveillance during visa counseling and application processing, turned away at borders and airports, and treated as inferior human beings. He says he will. .In this sense, banning TikTok could only reinforce harmful stereotypes against all Asians in the US
Public universities should always be the first to protect students and provide a platform for their voices to be heard. This is fair game.
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Otherwise, all of us who live in the United States and hope for a bright future will see the door shut the moment we enter the United States. It’s not because we don’t have access to his TikTok, or because we can’t endlessly scroll through social media for hours, it’s because he makes one calculated attack on freedom of expression, and others. This is because many people can follow suit.
mladena@miamioh.edu
Anastasia Mladenovska is a sophomore triple major in Political Science, Finance, Russian Studies, Eastern European Studies, and Eurasian Studies from Macedonia. She is involved with the Honors College and Scholar Leaders. She also volunteers with the Oxford League of Women Voters.
