With TikTok ban looming, Washington is more concerned than any other state, study finds
With a 9-0 decision on Friday, Jan. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a nationwide ban on the social media platform TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells the app by Sunday, Jan. 19. The ban, approved by Congress in March, was signed into law in April.
It stems from concerns that China’s national security laws allow the country’s government to pressure ByteDance, which is based in China, to hand over the personal information of its users.
“The Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision confirmed that there’s a real ‘there’ there when it comes to foreign agents’ influence on TikTok and the threat to national security,” Maria Cantwell, one of Washington’s two senators, said in a statement after the decision.
Cantwell, along with her fellow senator Patty Murray and eight of the state’s ten congresspeople, voted in favor of the ban. But with the deadline just two days away, Washington is more concerned about the looming ban than any other state, according to a new report.
WA searching TikTok ban more than other states
Document processing software company Apryse analyzed Google search data to find which states are asking questions about the upcoming ban. According to the report, Washingtonians searched for information on the ban at a rate of 1,816 times for every 100,000 residents. That was over 400 searches per 100,000 higher than the median rate for all 50 states.
The study found that the most-searched term related to the ban in the state was “TikTok ban explained.” Google Trends data indicates that searches for “TikTok ban” have increased by over twenty times in Washington since early January.
In other states, New York came in second place at 1,770 searches per 100,000 people. No other state broke the 1,700 search per 100,000 threshold. Virginia and Oregon took third and fourth place at 1,695 and 1,680 searches per 100,000.
On the other end of the spectrum, Montana searched for the ban the least, at 1,014 searches per 100,000, followed by New Mexico at 1,129.
The study was conducted by analyzing thousands of search terms, such as “TikTok ban,” “TikTok ban explained,” “when will TikTok be banned?” and “why is TikTok getting banned?” Searches for TikTok alternatives, including “apps like TikTok,” “rednote download” and “lemon8 download,” were included as well.
What a Washington-based TikTok creator had to say
Christopher Watson, better known as @Catluminati on TikTok, expressed his concern over the possibility of the app being banned in the coming days in an interview with McClatchy.
Watson, who is based in Tacoma, has been on TikTok since 2020 and has over 2 million followers, said he is unhappy that the government wants to shut the app down because he believes they are “crushing people’s freedom of speech.”
Watson added that the TikTok ban could be “financially catastrophic” for creators and small businesses who rely on the income it brings them.
“The TikTok ban would probably impact my income and I don’t know what I would do to supplement it, because it is a pretty good piece of it, but there are some people I know that it’s literally their only source of income,” Watson said. “They created their own careers off of TikTok, doing things like TikTok shop and coming out with their own products.”
Aside from the financial benefits and stability for many TikTok creators, Watson said he is sad to know that if the app is banned, all of the communities that have been built over time will likely not exist anymore.
This story was originally published January 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "With TikTok ban looming, Washington is more concerned than any other state, study finds."
