• by Colin Kirkland , September 6, 2024

Based on the bill President Biden signed in April, TikTok is likely to be sold or banned in the U.S. within a matter of months.

But as the potential fate of the short-form video sharing app looms closer, more Americans – even non-TikTok users – oppose a ban and believe the app will remain accessible to them, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.

A survey conducted by Pew Research between July and August shows public support for the TikTok ban declining, while many U.S. adults are skeptical that such a ban will even take place.

In March 2023, 50% of Americans supported the U.S. government banning TikTok due to a number of reasons, including privacy concerns related to the Chinese government's access to American user data, as well as potential mental health risks associated with obsessive social-media use among young people.

However, that number continues to drop. Most recently, Pew found that only 32% of those surveyed support the ban, while those who actively oppose a ban continues to rise, from 22% in March 2023 to 28% over the summer.

The share of Americans who are uncertain whether the government should ban the ByteDance-owned platform has also risen from 28% in March 2023 to 39%.

“For the first time, we measured public views on the likelihood of TikTok getting banned in the US” and “Americans are more likely to believe this will not happen than to think it will,” Pew wrote in its report.

Half of Americans think it is very or somewhat unlikely that the platform will be banned in the U.S., while 31% say a ban is at least somewhat likely and only 6% believe it is very likely.

The findings come as TikTok and the U.S. government are headed to the courts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the case set for oral arguments this month after TikTok, its parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok content creators filed various suits to block the law, with the hopes of preserving the app’s availability for the 170 million TikTok users in the U.S.

As it stands under the current presidential administration, ByteDance must divest TikTok&'s US assets by January 19th or face a ban. But another factor that could sway the decision to sell off or ban the app is the outcome of the upcoming 2024 presidential election.