TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — TikTok users across the United States were caught off guard when the popular video-sharing platform went offline Saturday night, January 18.
The abrupt shutdown followed a federal mandate requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban over national security concerns regarding data privacy.
The outage, which began around 8:30 p.m., left Tucsonans staring at messages informing them that service was unavailable. While the downtime lasted less than 24 hours, it sparked conversations about government influence on technology and privacy issues.
Samantha Godden Chmielowicz, a high school teacher visiting from Chicago, described TikTok as a valuable educational resource.
“A lot of people post content, ideas, and lesson plans that can be used with students or things that they’ve done that’s been successful,” she explained.
Godden Chmielowicz also used the ban to teach her students about the power of government policies. “They’re sort of like, ‘How can they do that? How is that possible?’” she said. “I tell them, it’s a policy. They can change the policy if they vote on it.”
She expressed concern over its addictive nature, saying, “I have a student teacher right now, and he’s like, ‘I have a hard time getting their attention.’” As a result, she tries to present the curriculum in the style of a TikTok video to get engagement from students.
Despite the negatives, she sees many positives to the platform. “I can also see the useful side in terms of sharing information and getting ideas out there,” she said. “Particularly for small businesses and beginning musicians who don’t have money for advertising.”
According to TikTok, about 120,000 businesses in Arizona use the platform to market their products and services.
University of Arizona student Cameron Graham believes that TikTok’s shutdown highlights broader privacy issues.
“The real issue is the fact that there’s no protection over our own privacy,” Graham said. “It’s so normalized — your data is just out there,” he said.
However, Graham feels that banning the app entirely is excessive. “The system was definitely not working,” he said. “But I don’t think we need to ban the whole thing.”
Kayla Goddard, another UA student, admitted to spending up to eight hours a day on TikTok. She was stunned when the app went dark.
“It just said inactive,” Goddard said. “I thought maybe I’d scroll out of it and it would be fine, but then it just went dark. It’s so sad.” she said. Still, she sees a potential upside. “Maybe some social media break will be good,” she added.
Around noontime on Sunday, January 19th TikTok access was unexpectedly restored. A message appearing on the site read:
“Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
On January 19, President-elect Donald Trump announced plans for an executive order granting TikTok a 90-day extension to meet compliance requirements. With inauguration day looming on January 20, the app’s future remains uncertain but for now, TikTok users have a temporary reprieve.
KGUN9 will continue to provide updates as the story develops.
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Joel Foster is a multimedia journalist at KGUN 9 who previously worked as an English teacher in both Boston and the Tucson area. Joel has experience working with web, print and video in the tech, finance, nonprofit and the public sectors. In his off-time, you might catch Joel taking part in Tucson's local comedy scene. Share your story ideas with Joel at joel.foster@kgun9.com, or by connecting on Facebook, Instagram or X.
