Why TikTok bans have spread onto college campuses in multiple … – USA TODAY

Leon Ondieki earns a living filming and posting TikTok videos on college campuses. He built up his following just before he enrolled at the University of Georgia and has amassed 2.1 million followers – which helped pay for his tuition and a car. 
As a growing number of universities ban the wildly popular social media platform on school-owned devices and networks, Ondieki is adapting, posting on YouTube Shorts and Snapchat Spotlight. Now taking a gap year, he outfitted the sprinter van for his upcoming tour with Starlink, a broadband internet service, and a hot spot so he doesn’t have to rely on campus Wi-Fi.
“For any content creator who’s in school, I can see how this would be frustrating, especially considering that some content creators have made a lot of money for their schools,” he said, pointing to high-profile athletes like Olympic gold medalist Sunisa Lee, who competes for Auburn University – which has banned the app – and who has more than 1.6 million TikTok followers
The University of Texas at Austin this week became one of the latest to announce it is restricting access to TikTok. Universities in Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia also are among those limiting access and shutting down official university accounts. The colleges often cite recent state and federal level bans when taking action.
The bans come after more than 30 states have issued varying TikTok bans, Congress banned TikTok from most government-issued devices, and the U.S. armed forces banned the app on military devices.
Experts say that although the measures don’t fully bar TikTok, they can inhibit faculty’s research, teaching and ability to connect with students.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, and some worry that it could share sensitive data with the Chinese government. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November that he is “extremely concerned” China could weaponize data collected through the app.
Higher education institutions are being cautious because they could lose public funding or be sued if there’s a majority security breach, said Vanessa Dennen, professor of instructional systems and learning technologies at Florida State University, which has no ban.
“Personnel data, student data, our research data – the protection of data is something that we’re highly concerned with,” Dennen said. “There seems to be sufficient reasonable concern from a data security issue or standpoint and it’s not unusual for universities to have this kind of a concern.” 
The restrictions do not erase TikTok from campus, Dennen said: Users can still access the app on personal devices using cellular data.
University of Texas at Austin professors Natalie Stroud and Samuel Woolley questioned whether the ban will have the intended security effect given staff are able to access university systems on their personal devices as well.
“It’s unclear to me what the specific threat is of potential data gathered by the Chinese government,” Woolley added.
For Stroud and Woolley, part of the university’s Center for Media Engagement, the ban means they’ll no longer be able to share information with students through the center’s TikTok channel or share videos in classes. They said the ban will keep them from being able to effectively teach and research disinformation, misinformation and other forms of propaganda spreading on TikTok.
“If you’re not able to relate to them with a communication medium that many of them use frequently, that’s a significant handicap,” Stroud said.
University faculty and staff also use the app to recruit students and engage with the school community and athletic fans.
“It isn’t just the research,” Dennen said. “It is the marketing of the universities, of the institutions that would be affected.”
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. teenagers say they use TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center. But Dennen said she doesn’t believe the bans will have a major impact on most students.
“People will have their workarounds, and their workarounds are not going to be tremendously difficult or cumbersome,” Dennen said.
UT Austin professors: Why the TikTok ban needs university exemptions
The company is “disappointed” by the recent state-level bans, Jamal Brown, a spokesperson for TikTok, told USA TODAY.
“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok,” Brown said. “We’re especially sorry to see the unintended consequences of these rushed policies beginning to impact universities’ ability to share information, recruit students, and build communities around athletic teams, student groups, campus publications, and more.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
Contact Breaking News Reporter N’dea Yancey-Bragg at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @NdeaYanceyBragg

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