Influencer Julia “Mysterious Girl” Hill (Center) with creators KSI (Left) and Logan Paul (Right) during one of her viral skits on TikTok. (Photo provided by Mysterious Girl).

With the expected upcoming TikTok ban on January 19, 2025, many influencers may be forced to find a new platform to create content or find another source of income. 

This is because of national security risks addressed by the Supreme Court. TikTok is owned by ByteDance which is based out of Beijing, and therefore must operate under Chinese laws. ByteDance is a global incubator of platforms at the cutting edge of commerce, content, entertainment, and enterprise services.

This may mean that China could be stealing information about both the user and the country. 

Influencer Julia “Mysterious Girl” Hill will directly be impacted by the ban. Mysterious Girl has a combined 1.21 million followers on her TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram accounts.

“I mean, the ban will affect honestly everything,” said Hill. “Like it’s my job right now and I was going to have this as my source of income through college if everything was going well.”

Many influencers may also need to find other sources of income if they are not able to transfer their supporters from TikTok to another platform. Creators are estimated to lose over one billion dollars in revenue.

“I think a lot of the creators that are smaller are not going to be able to move to a different platform… a lot of them are just not going to be on social media at all and probably have to get actual jobs,” Hill explained.

TikTok offers some useful tools and other features that other platforms do not. Many people use it as a search engine to find helpful information.

“TikTok definitely does offer helpful things. TikTok will push out your videos way more than any other platform. It’s way easier to go viral on TikTok than on Instagram, YouTube, or Snapchat. It’s good marketing for everything and I’ll definitely miss first of all, just the entertainment and second of all, l I look up everything on TikTok. I’ll look up how to cook something or how to do something,” Hill said. 

Influencers have been following the legal case with TikTok and have some of their own opinions on it.

“Oh yeah, I followed it and I just think that what they’re doing they do not realize how much it affects everyone, like it doesn’t just affect creators.” 

Influencers may try to move to other social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and more. Some creators are also hoping that an app similar to TikTok will come out following the ban.