Samuel Aldridge is a 33-year-old dad from North Carolina. He’s worked 12-hour days as a pipe-layer for most of his adult life. He’s a self-proclaimed “Average Joe.” He also has nearly two million followers and 50 million likes on TikTok.
After a six-year social media journey across various platforms, Aldridge made it big on TikTok in 2022 as @Slamuri. His niche was storytelling – he’s the faceless narrator behind the heavily researched, 50-part sagas about true crime and internet drama that suck unsuspecting scrollers into hours-long deep dives.
Thanks to the mysterious TikTok algorithm boosting one of his videos, “TikTokers who did terrible things,” to over 15 million people, Aldridge was able to quit his construction job and support his family by making TikToks full-time.
Two months ago he decided it wasn’t worth it.
“Once you’re sucked into creating content, a lot of your social life just kind of disappears,” he said. “I realized to keep things moving, I was just going to have to keep working more and more and I was already working 17 to 19 hours a day just doing content.”
In February, he announced on all his social media platforms that he was returning to pipe-laying and stepping back from content creation. His reasoning was simple — he wanted more time with his young kids, and TikTok had consumed his life. He feared he was missing a pivotal moment that he couldn’t get back.
Aldridge isn’t alone. Some users and creators on TikTok are parting ways with the app, citing a variety of reasons ranging from the addictive algorithm to body image issues. User growth as a whole on the platform is slowing down; TikTok’s annual user base grew 84% between 2019 and 2020, but only increased by 16% between 2022 and 2023, according to a Business of Apps report.
On top of this mounting exodus, on April 23 Congress passed a bill proposing to ban TikTok if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, refuses to sell within nine months. This new version of the bill, which initially passed the House in mid-March, was updated “based on negotiations with key senators” to speed it through the Senate, according to Politico. President Joe Biden signed the bill into action the next day.
TikTok’s future is dubious in America on all fronts, but Congress’ arguments against the platform differ significantly from the average user’s.
The bipartisan legislators in favor of the bill say that TikTok’s Chinese ownership seriously threatens national security. Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, called the app “a spy balloon in American’s phones” and “a modern-day Trojan horse of the CCP” on April 20 when he introduced the updated measure to the House.
“National security experts are sounding the alarm, warning that our foreign adversaries are using every tool at their disposal, including apps like TikTok, to amass troves of sensitive data on all Americans,” Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone said. “This bill takes decisive action to mitigate our foreign adversaries’ ability to collect Americans’ data and use it against us.”
However, for some users, China’s data-storing practices aren’t even on their list of reasons to quit scrolling.
“I think even if a lot of the public found out that there was a major link between the Chinese government and TikTok, they really wouldn’t care,” Aldridge said. “For me right now, it could go either way because I don’t really use it anymore. I’m working a full-time job.”
Anna Shvidler is a college student and self-proclaimed reformed TikTok addict. She said she finally quit the app in late 2022 after many futile attempts, her main concern being how time-consuming it was.
“The beginning of the pandemic felt like it was going on for such a long time because I had so much free time in the day, but as soon as I got TikTok, the days went by so quickly that they all kind of meshed together,” she said.
TikTok is the most engaging social media app by a large margin. The platform has an average engagement rate of 2.65% by follower count, meaning users spend more time and initiate more interactions on the app than any other, according to Social Insider data. Even though this number has steadily fallen by about 35% each year, it still far outranks competitors, with runner-up Instagram following far behind at a 0.70% engagement rate.
The app’s highly individualized algorithm is “designed to continuously improve, correct, and learn from your own engagement with the platform to produce personalized recommendations,” according to TikTok’s website. This ingenuity bombards users with an essentially infinite number of videos that, in theory, perfectly mirror their interests and beliefs. While there’s little literature about the actual mechanisms of the app’s algorithm, it’s clear that it’s succeeding at keeping users engaged.
In February, psychologist Christian Montag and neuroscientist Sebastian Markett published an article on the app’s potential to be addictive, analyzing the link between mental health issues and what they call TikTok Use Disorder (TTUD). They argue that TikTok’s staggering relevance and the lack of research on the platform warrant a unique category outside of general social media overuse.
The survey found that TikTok overuse was linked to neurotic and depressive tendencies. It also found that users may watch TikTok as a form of escapism from negative emotions, encouraging further addictive behavior.
“Let’s say you are consuming a video, and although it is not funny, the next one probably will be and it is just a few seconds around the corner,” Montag said. “So users are in an expectation mode that something interesting will happen when consuming the next video.”
Peter Anto Johnson is a biomedical engineering student at the University of Alberta studying addiction and “dopamine fasting,” a viral technique to restrict impulsive behaviors by cutting out engaging stimuli like TikTok. He said that while experts are still learning about the mental impact of social media, there’s evidence that overuse can be detrimental.
“I think social media addiction is definitely something that’s out there, and it’s not recognized by the DSM or as a mental health disorder,” Johnson said. “But I think with the growing trends, I do see it coming to be coming to a point where we might see that being classified as more of an addictive behavior.”
Addiction isn’t the only mental health impact that’s pushing TikTokers to quit. Some cite heightened negative senses of self-esteem and body image issues due to harmful content that slips through the cracks in the app’s content moderation system.
“I started experiencing a lot of negativity with my first few videos,” Aldridge said. “I started actually reading comments and taking things to heart. And that, as a creator, is one thing that you just really shouldn’t do.”
Hateful social media comments are associated with a myriad of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and body image issues, according to social anxiety expert Arlin Cuncic. Specifically on image and video-based platforms like TikTok, users are bombarded with content that proliferates unrealistic beauty standards and encourages heightened self-scrutiny.
Eating disorder and body image content are such a contentious part of TikTok’s algorithm that the app had a section dedicated to them on its community guidelines page. The website reads: “We want TikTok to be a place that encourages self-esteem, and does not promote negative social comparisons. We do not allow showing or promoting disordered eating or any dangerous weight loss behaviors.”
But some harmful content inevitably passes by the algorithm’s sporadic regulation, which has been criticized for its lack of moderation.
Rachel Rodgers is a professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University who researches the intersection of social media, body image and eating disorders. She said she doesn’t use any form of social media because of the potential detrimental impact it can have on mental health.
“If a platform is mostly photo or video, it is orienting users towards taking pictures and videos of them,” Rodgers said. “Therefore, that aligns with the discourse in our society that centers appearance as being an important element of people’s social value, particularly important for people who typically hold lower levels of privilege and power.”
Users like Natalie Williams, a 20-year-old pre-med student, say the rigid beauty standards TikTok promoted drove them off the platform.
“I was first inspired to quit TikTok because I was going through a period of my life where I was feeling really insecure, especially about my body,” Williams said. “I felt like every time I went on TikTok, I would just see random girls who are a size zero, size double zero, who looked perfect. And every time I saw that, it just made me feel horrible about myself.”
Whether their reasoning for quitting be worsening mental health or simply a lack of time for constant content consumption, former TikTok users are clear on one front – they don’t care about China using their data.
For the average person, China accessing their scrolling history isn’t an immediate concern. The get-ready-with-me videos they make or the drama series they binge aren’t particularly incriminating; Especially when they know that the countless other social media apps they use are storing their data anyway.
Even international relations experts are skeptical about Congress’ reasoning for their anti-TikTok tirade. Jonathan Aronson is a professor of communication, international relations and political science at the University of Southern California and an affiliate of the USC U.S.-China Institute. He criticized the bill as overkill and said banning TikTok is like “using a sledgehammer to drive in a nail.”
“I do know the Chinese spy on Americans all the time. I also know American spy on the Chinese all the time. The Russians are even worse,” he said. “Whether or not there’s anything special about TikTok doing it, from what I have seen, I doubt it.”
Meta, the American company that owns some of TikTok’s biggest competitors like Instagram and Facebook, has been criticized for its data storage issues. In 2018, NBC compiled a list of all of Facebook’s privacy issues since the platform’s 2004 inception, including a March 2018 data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users. While Chinese platforms may farm data, American apps don’t promise much more security with users’ private information.
Perhaps some of Congress’ anti-TikTok views aren’t just about the sanctity of American data. Anti-Chinese sentiment grew significantly in the last four years, with 81% of Americans holding an unfavorable view of China in 2024 compared to 66% in 2020. This may have been bolstered by former President Trump’s public mockery of China; After calling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” in 2020, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health noted an increase in hate crimes and anti-Asian hashtags.
“If you’re going to do this, if you can prove there’s a problem, sure, go after them. But simply because they’re owned by the Chinese?” Aronson said. “How about if they were owned by the Swedes? Would you go after them then? Or if they were owned by the Israelis? Or the Gazans?... Where do you stop? How do you draw the line?”
TikTok CEO Shou Chew posted a video on TikTok on April 24 saying that the platform will challenge the law in court and does not plan on selling.