U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) recently expressed that he is in favor of banning TikTok from government devices for security purposes and believes the app also harmful for children and young adults.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the greatest threat to our nation and global stability,” Donalds told Globe Banner. “To protect our federal and state governments across the country, I fully support the bipartisan efforts to ban TikTok on government devices. Americans should reconsider using this platform heavily because it's doing more harm than good. The CCP's weaponization of this popular social media application is actively collecting data on tens of millions of young people and trafficking harmful content that is killing Americans daily. In the 118th Congress, I will work tirelessly to hold China accountable and protect our national security from their malign conduct.”
Catherine Szpindor, the U.S. House's chief administrative officer, notified staff in an internal memo in late December that her office’s cybersecurity unit had determined that TikTok posed "high risk to users due to a number of security risks" and must be deleted from mobile phones, according to NBC News.
"House staff are not allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices," the memo stated. "If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it."
TikTok said in a December statement that it is working to "meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them."
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently expressed concerns over the potential for the Chinese government to engage in espionage or influence via TikTok.
Speaking to an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Wray said in early December that the FBI believes China can use TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, to collect users' data and manipulate content, according to AP News.
“All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values, and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States,” Wray told AP News. “That should concern us.”
TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas said in a September Senate hearing that the Chinese government cannot access American users' data. “We will never share data, period,” she said.
In December, four ByteDance employees, two of whom were based in China, accessed the IP addresses and other data of American TikTok users, including journalists, reportedly in an effort to discern the source of leaked information, according to Engadget.
ByteDance fired the employees and said, "ByteDance condemns this misguided plan that seriously violated the company's code of conduct. We have taken disciplinary measures, and none of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance."
TikTok executive Shou Zi Chew wrote in a letter last summer that China-based ByteDance employees could access TikTok users' data when “subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team," The New York Times reported.
Dr. David Barnhart, a clinical mental health counselor at Behavioral Sciences of Alabama, said TikTok's format makes it especially addictive, even compared to other social media apps, and can harm young peoples' self-esteem, according to WAFF 48 News. Barnhart said young TikTok users can "begin to get this view of themselves in comparison to other people and the more of that we see, the more distorted our view of what it’s like to be the best, to be good. We don’t have an awareness of what we are doing to our own brains.”
Donalds served in Florida's House of Representatives before being elected to represent the state's 19th Congressional District, according to his website.