TikTok is now banned on at least two prominent college campuses, because of alleged ongoing national security concerns.
The University of Texas at Austin and A&M College Station have banned Tik Tok off of the school’s public WiFi. This comes as a direct result of Governor Greg Abbott’s call for TikTok to be banned on all state devices, on account of concerns about the app leaking American citizen’s private information to China’s Communist Party.
“I saw it on TikTok actually,” senior Annalisa Tracy said. “They were complaining that they couldn’t watch TikTok at school anymore.”
Despite restrictions, students still have the ability to get on TikTok on personal devices with a VPN or personal data.
“I don’t see why they need to [ban TikTok],” junior Zachary Elliot said. “Everybody uses it and it’s not really affecting anything.”
This ban even extends to on-campus dorms, as they still use the school’s WiFi.
“At high school, you can leave the school and still go home and watch TikTok,” Tracy said. “But at college you live there, and even days you don’t have class you still live there, and you still can’t watch TikTok.”
Students on secondary campuses are used to similar restrictions. However, this is uncommon on college campuses.
“People like to have their free time and do what they want to do,” Tracy said. “Taking away an option to do in their free time, not cool.”
While the app allegedly takes your personal information, some students believe that this isn’t a big enough threat to the younger audience.
“What they do is they take literally all of the data from the users, anything from facial recognition to keyword patterns and stuff like that,” junior Jaden Nell said. “I don’t really feel like that’s a national threat, because I don’t really feel like anyone of high-ranking clearance is going to use TikTok.”
Many students are not alarmed by TikTok’s use of their personal information and most likely will continue to use it, despite the ban on Texas campuses.
“I don’t really feel like it’s a big change,” Nell said. “I feel like TikTok is a limiting factor, especially because everybody would rather spend time doing that than actually bring their attention to something more important.”
