A silhouette of a woman stands with a thought bubble about the ban of TikTok. As legislation proposing changes to the owners and future of TikTok in the United States passes through the House, we are facing the possibility of a TikTok-less life, but it may be different than you think. (Graphic Illustration by Oona Seppala) 

You may have heard rumors and whisperings that TikTok is being banned. You may have seen clips of Shou Zi Chew testifying at a congressional hearing, answering a plethora of questions from U.S. senators about everything from his company practices to ethnicity.

The House of Representatives passed a bill in March that would oblige Chinese media company, ByteDance, to sell their $50 billion social media app, TikTok. The reasoning behind this stems from national security risk concerns from lawmakers about American data and misinformation. In an NPR interview, Representative Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin said, “classified and unclassified national security assessments show that the app is a threat to user privacy and that it’s been used to target journalists and interfere in elections.”

There are additional concerns that the Chinese Communist Party has used the app for propaganda purposes, though this information has not been confirmed. If ByteDance doesn’t cooperate, it will be illegal for app stores to sell the app in the U.S., therefore banning its use in the country.

Contemplating a world, or even a day, without TikTok might seem foreign or unimaginable. But since July 2023, it’s been my everyday experience. I deleted the app because I found myself spending too much time watching other people’s lives instead of being present on my own. I have experienced physical and emotional changes since this change; some are more positive, while some are more nuanced. Here are the five biggest influences that a world without TikTok has had on me.

All of this isn’t to convince you to delete it as well or say that I’ll never re-download it in the future. But I do hope that every consumer of social media can step back to reflect on the ways that it affects their behavior. Even small “cleanses” can benefit the brain and help you reset.