The U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 17 decision upholding a federal law to shut down TikTok or force its China-controlled parent company to sell it throws uncertainty into how educators will continue to use the platform to share ideas, learn new teaching skills, and build their social media influencer reputations.
The platform, which is highly popular among many educators and students, has also prompted frustration from others, who have seen it used by kids to spread dangerous viral challenges, such as vandalizing schools; distract students from learning in school; and contribute to kids’ mental health problems. That’s why many educators are not fans of it.
The court, in an unsigned opinion in TikTok Inc. v. Garland, said the law, passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last year, does not violate the First Amendment rights of TikTok or a group of its content creators.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court said. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data-collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
But the decision does not sit well with Emily Glankler, who until this school year taught high school history in Austin, Texas. She is now a full-time content creator on TikTok and other social media sites. The Supreme Court’s decision is “really terrible,” she said.
Glankler created her TikTok account, Anti-Social Studies, in 2020, two years after starting a podcast and Instagram account under the same name. She has more than 500,000 followers and uses the platform to discuss how she approaches different lessons in her classroom, while also providing history lessons for the general public.
“I feel like I’m going to be cut off from a whole community overnight,” Glankler said. “For me, [TikTok] has led to almost every connection that I have in the world of education and history.”
The Jan. 17 Supreme Court decision was issued two days before the federal law is set to take effect, and amid other fast-moving developments. That leaves unresolved the question of whether TikTok is indeed about to go dark.
Update: After the Supreme Court ruling, TikTok shut down the app on the eve of the law taking effect. But after Trump signaled his intent to issue an executive order extending the effects of the law by 90 days once he was sworn into office, TikTok on Jan. 19 restored the app.
On Jan. 16, the White House indicated that Biden would not enforce it during the 36 hours from Sunday to noon on Monday, when President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in to a second term.
Biden reportedly declined intense lobbying to issue a formal 90-day extension of the effective date for the law. Although the statute allows the president to do that, it is supposed to be invoked only if there is “significant progress” towards a divestiture of TikTok by ByteDance, its Chinese owner.
Will educators turn to other social media sites?
It is still unclear how the ruling against TikTok will ultimately play out for educators. Some experts see educators simply moving on to other platforms to fill the void.
Jeff Carpenter, a professor of education at Elon University who studies social media in education, said the typical educator’s use of TikTok “has been relatively less social, compared to some of the other platforms where networks, communities, and relationships are a bit more important,” according to his research.
For a majority of educators, the ban will most likely be “more about losing a source of content and information related to education than it will be about a sense of losing relationships, networks, or communities,” Carpenter said. “Because there are other platforms that can serve as information sources, I think plenty of educators will shrug, feel a little wistful, and move on to another app or platform.”
President-elect Donald Trump, who sought to ban TikTok during his first term, has more recently embraced the platform and vowed to “save” it. He has indicated he would issue some form of extension of the law once he takes office, though there are questions about whether he could do so after the Jan. 19 effective date.
It’s not clear whether a promise by Biden or Trump not to enforce the law would be enough to convince what the statute calls “third-party service providers”—such as Apple and Google—to continue to allow downloads of the app and tech updates to keep it running.
Trump, in a brief phone interview with a CNN reporter after the decision, said the matter “ultimately goes up to me, so you’re going to see what I’m going to do. ... Congress has given me the decision, so I’ll be making the decision.”
SCOTUS urges caution on cases about emerging technologies
The rationale behind the federal law is twofold: First, China, which exerts control over ByteDance and its algorithm for feeding videos to TikTok users, is capable of covertly manipulating content on TikTok to undermine U.S. democracy. Second, it can use the app to gather users’ sensitive personal data.
During the Jan. 10 Supreme Court arguments in the challenge to the law, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cited the data-collection interest.
“I think Congress and the president were concerned that China was accessing information about millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, people in their 20s, that they would use that information over time to develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people—people who, a generation from now, will be working in the FBI or the CIA or in the State Department,” Kavanaugh said.
The court’s unsigned opinion reflects both the urgent posture of the case and the uncertainties of evolving internet technologies.
“We are conscious that the cases before us involve new technologies with transformative capabilities,” the court said. “This challenging new context counsels caution on our part.”
The court determined that the law, officially the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is content-neutral and its challenged provisions satisfy an intermediate level of First Amendment scrutiny.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch concurred only in the outcome of the case, but did not agree with all of its First Amendment conclusions. He said: “I harbor serious reservations about whether the law before us is content neutral and thus escapes strict scrutiny,” or the highest level of constitutional analysis.
The court said the law was justified by the federal government’s concern about preventing China from collecting “vast amounts” of data from TikTok’s users in the United States.
Whatever the legal arguments, many educators don’t believe a TikTok ban will solve their social media and cellphone woes. Students will find another platform to use constantly, they say.
“I don’t think kids are magically going to pay so much more attention in class or anything like that,” said Patrick Greene, the principal of Greene Central High School in Snow Hill, N.C. “I think something will pop up and take its place. I don’t anticipate I’ll see a dramatic change in schools because of the ban.”
