What the TikTok documents mean for the company, its users, and the country

WAMU 88.5 | By Michael Falero

Published October 14, 2024 at 7:21 AM EDT

This photograph taken shows a man holding a smartphone displaying the logo of Chinese social media platform Tiktok in an office.

It’s the social media app that seemingly every American teenager – not to mention millions of adults – uses every day: TikTok.

The platform’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, faces a ban of the app in the U.S. if it doesn’t sell TikTok to an American company by mid-January 2025.

NPR reported on newly revealed TikTok documents that shine a light on what the company knows about the effects of its platform on users. And TikTok says that its user base includes 95 percent of American smartphone users under the age of 17.

Since the story broke last Friday, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has asked TikTok for all of its documents related to the safety of minors on its platform.

We talk about the details of the situation and the potential consequences.