Courtesy Tik Tok
If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t been able to access your favorite clock app on the campus of Florida A&M University lately, either on the school computers or the WiFi, it’s because the administration has now banned TikTok on the school’s internet and devices.
The school sent out a campus-wide email on March 7th stating that the social media app, along with Fizz, another social media app that has been gaining popularity on campus, may not be used on campus-owned devices, and the app has now been blocked on FAMU Secure.
The ban comes after President Joe Biden stated that he wanted to ban TikTok in schools nationwide.
Despite other schools and universities around the country also banning the app on their campuses, Florida universities such as Florida State University and the University of Florida remain undecided about banning the app.
Banning TikTok in middle and high schools is understandable as it can deter the younger minds in the classrooms, especially in the age of technology.
But, when it comes to college campuses, this does nothing but restricts the technological freedom of college students.
For example, student leaders and organizations use social media apps like TikTok to communicate and share information with their peers. Now that the school internet does not allow that, it will make it more difficult to do so.
This also doesn’t help those with limited data plans on their cellular devices. Since they’ll have to turn off the WiFi in order to access the app, this will cause them to consume more data than usual.
One thing that also causes confusion around the banning of the app is that the university had a TikTok page that was created around three years ago that was deleted recently due to the banning of the app.
TikTok was also a great contributor to helping not only FAMU, but other historically black colleges and universities, gain more recognition for the past couple of years.
The administration getting rid of TikTok makes students feel like they want to restrict how they use the campus WiFi and, in turn, how they express themselves on campus.
Let’s hope the college administrations nationwide stop at TikTok or other social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter might also be in jeopardy of being banned from schools.