PLAINFIELD — TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps. Its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has a month to sell to an American company or the app will be banned in the U.S.
Sophia Wyrick and her uncle, Andrew Thoman, have been on TikTok since 2020. Their account, Alex and Andy Pet Bandanas, turned into their full-time job.
They sell t-shirts and dog bandannas and 95% of their sales come from the TikTok shop.
"We have other platforms but not the extent that TikTok and TikTok shop has provided us, so it would just be detrimental,” Wyrick said. “Honestly, we aren't sure what we are going to do."
Wyrick created the account after Thoman suffered a stroke. Therapy and recovery costs were expensive, but when she posted what she was doing on TikTok, the account blew up.
They have had 45,000 orders, and TikTok has allowed them to share their products with 27 other countries.
"We just had a viral video a few days ago with over 1.3 million views,” Wyrick said. “We had hundreds of orders in just one day. You are not going to get that from an Instagram reel or a Facebook video."
On January 19, creators could see views tank. As of right now, TikTok will no longer be available in the app store after that date. Experts say the ban will be gradual.
"People's experiences on the app would degrade because they wouldn't be able to update the application to the newest version of it,” Sarah Bauerle Danzman, an associate professor of the International Studies Department at Indiana University, said. “Then over time, the app would become increasingly unstable."
So how does TikTok move forward?
It plans an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but there is no guarantee the justices will hear the case. They could sell to an American company, but China has made that more difficult.
"The Chinese government has basically made it illegal for ByteDance to sell TikTok without getting approval from the Chinese government first,” Danzman said.
For creators with their livelihoods on the line, they hope Congress will reverse its decision.
"It's changed his life, but it’s changed mine in so many ways and it's just so important for people like us,” Wyrick said.
According to a report from Goldman Sachs earlier this year, the creator economy could approach half a trillion dollars by 2027. The expert we spoke with says the banning of TikTok could impact that or other apps could emerge.
