As TikTok ban looms, Long Island users scramble to find the next big app

Faith Stallone cannot risk missing the birth of Pickles the Cat’s baby.

So, when she learned that a national ban of the TikTok app might take effect on Sunday, the 17-year-old high school senior from Wantagh planned ahead. She contacted the creator of the pregnant cat’s TikTok account to ask, “Does Pickles have an Instagram page?”

Stallone has also contacted other content creators she follows on TikTok — she tends to watch videos on fitness, skin care and cooking, she said — to find out how she can keep up with them on alternative online platforms such as Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

And she said she’s leaning toward downloading a Chinese version of TikTok that devotees have been flocking to called Xiaohongshu, known familiarly as RedNote, which is primarily in Mandarin, with new American users dubbing themselves “TikTok refugees.”

“I’ll probably switch to that, but I’ll probably have to download Duolingo,” she said, in order to understand the app’s commands and features and the captions and comments of Chinese users.

The TikTok blackout remains in a state of uncertainty. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday to uphold a law requiring the company that owns TikTok, a Chinese company called ByteDance, to sell it by Jan. 19, which it has not done, The Associated Press reported. The United States has said the app, which has 170 million U.S. users, poses national security concerns regarding data collection.

However, the administration of President Joe Biden   said he will leave it to President-elect Trump to decide how to proceed as he takes office Jan. 20, the AP reported Friday. Trump has previously supported a ban but now has said he wants to pursue a resolution. It’s unclear whether TikTok will remain usable for people who already have the app installed on their phones.

WHERE MIGHT TIKTOK USERS GO NEXT?

Lauren Jenkins, 19, of Oceanside, a sophomore at Binghamton University, is one of those who has downloaded RedNote in anticipation of the TikTok decision. “It’s kind of cool to see how everyone in America is migrating over to this new app and how they’re interacting with a new country. People are Google translating what other people are saying. I don’t see it being a permanent solution, but for the time being it is,” she said.

Some say that moving to RedNote is a form of protest of the TikTok ban — the government is banning one Chinese app, so they’ll just move to another Chinese-owned app instead.

Jenkins’ sister, Meghan, 16, has chosen a different social app called Lemon8, which is also owned by ByteDance. “A lot of people are migrating to that as well,” she said. And Chanelle McKenzie, 22, who grew up in Medford and is now a senior at SUNY Purchase, said she’s using a video-based app called Clapper while she waits for a new algorithm-based app called Neptune.

“I think it’s going to be a bunch of different apps that will take its place,” said Kevin Fernandez, 16, of Oceanside, said of TikTok.

INSTAGRAM REELS, YOUTUBE SHORTS

Other Long Islanders interviewed are planning to migrate to the more mainstream Instagram Reels and/or YouTube Shorts, both of which, like TikTok, feature videos by content creators. Many U.S. creators already post simultaneously on multiple platforms.

That’s the case for Grace Mary Williams, a Huntington-based creator with 2.6 million followers on TikTok. “I’ve been telling people I’ll be on Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat,” she said. “I’ve been making sure to push all that content onto these other channels to be proactive.” 

Jasmine Ramlowtan, 20, of Merrick, a junior at The State University of New York at Albany, predicts most people her age will settle on Instagram Reels. “A lot of people are on Instagram already, so it’s more convenient,” Ramlowtan said.

Ingrid Menor-Olguin, 19, of Huntington, a student at Iona University in New Rochelle, said she’s reopened her YouTube account so she can keep up with the influencers she follows. But she said these other apps aren’t the same at TikTok, without the sounds, filters, and algorithms that TikTok has that match users viewing preferences to the content they are fed. She calls Instagram features “a little bit dated and a little bit bland.”

Wherever they go, users lament that they won’t be able to take their stored and personal content with them. “I’ve been using the app since it was something called Musical.ly,” Lauren Jenkins said. She joined it in 2015; it was purchased by ByteDance and merged into TikTok several years later. “It’s kind of sad to see my past and all I did with my friends deleted. It’s part of my routine,” she said, “what I talk about and laugh about with my friends and family, and it may be taken away.”

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.