By: Aliya Koshalieva
Media Production Editor
Jan. 18, 2025, will go down as one of the worst days in history. After a long day without any screen time, I sat on the couch, my fingers eagerly reaching for the app that had become the bane of my existence: TikTok. The crowded room full of people went silent as I let out a guttural scream. “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” flashed across my phone. Tears fell on my phone as I read the message in despair, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.” I was inconsolable. The people around me kept saying, “it’s not a big deal,” but it was. I felt like I was ripped apart from the love of my life. I knew I had to face the reality of this situation, so I slowly began to recover. Here are some of the things I did during those dark hours.
Socializing: “Guys! TikTok is down!” I screamed to a room full of people. The room echoed with the sound of wailing as we all fell to our knees. What do we do now? We all awkwardly stared at each other. “So what’s up guys?” I asked the room. Crickets. Imagine the look on my face when my friend said, “Wait, what’s your name again? I only know you from your TikTok username.” I would have gone on TikTok to look up how to make friends, but since the app was down, I awkwardly sat there and stared at people until they talked to me.
Becoming an Apple engineer: Now that my phone was useless, I started looking for other apps to use. Instagram was boring—the same old, same old—so I was left with no choice but to visitSettings. Huzzah! I found a loophole that not even Tim Cook himself could find. “Guys wait, if you factory reset your phone and change your location, you can get the app to work!”
Falling into delusion: Before time with my beloved app ran out, I saved my favorite TikToks onto my phone’s camera roll so I could look back on them in the most dire situations. I only saved around five, but after spending hours watching them over and over, I started to believe I was back on TikTok, and I’d try to scroll even though I was staring into my saved videos on camera roll. My parents found me under my blanket in a dark room, spouting random quotes from popular TikToks.
Touching grass: I was running out of things to do, and all the other distractions were failing. I made the brave decision to set my phone down and do something I hadn’t done in a while: go outside. I was bewildered by the sights in front of me. Who knew that outside of TikTok, there was a beautiful blue sky with sunlight hitting the luscious green grass in my yard? I even saw people going about their days. How did they heal from the ban so quickly?
After crying myself to sleep, I woke up the next day ready to mourn my favorite app. Instinctually, I opened TikTok, expecting to see that dreaded message about the ban when, to my surprise, the app was back to normal. I wept tears of joy and kissed my screen as I was now finally reunited with my soulmate.