Just 22% of American adults oppose a TikTok ban, according to a recently conducted survey. Photo Credit: Jonathan Kemper
As Congress, the White House, and a number of international governments continue to deliberate over a potential TikTok ban, a new poll has revealed that 50% of American adults support outlawing the controversial app.
This and other noteworthy findings came to light in a newly published Pew Research survey of 3,576 U.S. adults. According to the resource, an even 50% of Americans favor implementing a countrywide TikTok ban at the federal level, with 22% opposing such a measure. The remaining 28% of the country is unsure whether the ByteDance-owned service should be prohibited, the study shows.
Predictably, the data also reflects TikTok’s generally young userbase; 46% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 oppose banning the platform, which has faced all manner of personal-data and national-security scrutiny. In the same category, 29% support a ban, with 24% uncertain of their stance on the issue.
But the percentage of those in favor of barring TikTok’s use increased in each of the other surveyed age groups, 30-49 (45%), 50-64 (54%), and 65 and older (71%), per the document. Of course, a majority (56%) of TikTok users oppose the ban while a similar majority of non-users (60%) support it, the findings show.
Interestingly, however, among respondents who were already aware that “TikTok’s parent company is based in China,” support for a ban came in at 60%. On the other hand, 53% of the individuals who didn’t know as much pre-survey communicated that they oppose a TikTok ban.
Expanding upon the point, 88% of Americans are “not at all” (59%) or “not too” (29%) confident that Chinese social media companies follow “what their privacy policies say they will do with their personal information,” according to the survey results. A nearly identical portion of U.S. adults aren’t at all or too confident that Chinese social media companies use “their personal information in ways that they are comfortable with.”
For further context, though, 75% of Americans aren’t confident that domestic social companies will abide by their own privacy policies, whereas 78% are skeptical that stateside companies will use personal information “in ways that they are comfortable with,” per the resource.
Earlier this week, France joined a growing list of countries that have barred TikTok’s use on government devices, and the RIAA about two weeks ago claimed that the platform “exploits recorded music to build an audience.” Nevertheless, these and other operational obstacles haven’t stopped TikTok from rolling out a paywall feature and more as of late.