Capital City Sunday: TikTok ban impacting young voters in 2024 election

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MADISON (WKOW) — Experts say the TikTok ban will impact the way young people vote in the 2024 election.

President Joe Biden signed a law at the end of April banning TikTok in the United States. The company that owns the social media platform must sell it in nine months or else it will go inactive.

27 News spoke with Madison College professor Steve Noll the day President Joe Biden signed the legislation. Noll said a ban on the platform has been a long time coming, but he’s shocked that it finally happened during an election year.

“I went to class and I said, ‘so did you guys hear the news today’? They [students] all kind of looked at me like ‘what news?’ and I’m like ‘say goodbye to TikTok,'” Noll said. “I kind of explained the whole thing and they had this look of disbelief. It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t shock. It was genuinely ‘what?'”

Noll spends a lot of time with students who just so happen to also be young voters. When 27 News asked him if he believes the ban will impact the way they vote, he said yes.

“I think definitely, this will be used as a slam against Joe Biden. If I was a Republican strategist, I would be all over this as a way to engage that younger user base on Twitter to vote Republican. So it absolutely has got all the hallmarks that you need for that type of negative campaigning,” Noll said.

But he said the ban is a bipartisan issue. Noll said he hopes students will recognize that as they cast their ballots.

“This wasn’t one side or the other. This is bipartisan. Now, the right is already blaming Joe Biden for taking TikTok away from the kids. They’re already out there with that kind of messaging. But the reality is, when Trump was president, he also wanted to ban TikTok. So this is definitely a bipartisan issue,” he said.

TikTok’s owner, Bytedance, has been ordered to sell the platform within nine months if it wants to continue operating in the United States. Noll said that time frame could extend years as it gets fought out in the courts.

“TikTok has already responded saying that this is first amendment, they’re going to countersue,” he said.

If TikTok does get bought by an American company, Noll said its entire business model will change.

“If you ask even young people, ‘would you pay five bucks a month for TikTok?’ They’re all gonna say no. So the only way to make money is to have ads, which means you’re gonna have to have more ads, and then TikTok will be different and then will it lose its addictive characteristic? That’s the question,” Noll said.

He said he’s surprised something of this magnitude is being introduced during an election year.