Has TikTok made us better? Or much, much worse?

For years, murmurs of a US TikTok ban have left users and creators furious and terrified that a social media app that had become central to their lives could be taken away. Again and again, the ban never actually materialized, and users continued to enjoy what had, since 2018, become one of the most creative, vital, and paradigm-shifting developments in internet culture.

But this is no longer a “boy who cried wolf” situation. On Friday, the Supreme Court signaled that it would uphold the law signed by President Biden last April requiring TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok from its Chinese ownership or risk facing a ban in the US.

As of now, TikTok plans to comply by completely shutting down its app in the US on January 19 unless the Supreme Court intervenes in its favor, which appears increasingly unlikely after Friday’s oral arguments. And despite the reported interest in buying the company from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary and billionaire Frank McCourt, ByteDance has said TikTok isn’t for sale.

Nobody knows what a world without TikTok — or at least a world where the TikTok app can still technically be used, just not downloaded or updated — will look like. Incoming President Donald Trump has said he would try to reverse the ban, though he has limited options to do so.

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