Young Democrats sound the alarm about banning TikTok before the election

Democratic strategists and White House allies are warning their party that a fresh push to potentially ban TikTok could have serious consequences this fall for engaging young voters — a critical voting bloc already frustrated with President Joe Biden.

TikTok, used by nearly two-thirds of Americans under 30, is under serious threat from a bipartisan bill, which the House passed on Wednesday, to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to either sell the app to an American company or face a nationwide ban in six months. The bill, driven by national security concerns, faces an uncertain path in the Senate, but Biden told reporters last week that he’d sign the legislation if it landed on his desk.

Some Democrats fear that the electoral fallout could not only depress young voter turnout but also cut off a critical channel to communicate with them.

"This legislation, I think, is a mistake," said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress and a member of Biden’s campaign advisory board. "We need to regulate social media — not just TikTok — but all of it."

Frost, who voted against the bill, warned that it “should be a political concern” for Democrats courting young voters — a worry that others in the party share.

“Democrats need to reach younger voters more than Republicans need to reach them, and TIkTok is the most valuable tool to do that,” said Kyle Tharp, who is the managing director at Courier, a progressive media company. “Taking that tool away from campaigns, progressive media companies, content creators two months out from Election Day would be a net negative for Democratic candidates.”

Former President Donald Trump, for his part, flipped his position on TikTok in recent days. He now opposes banning the app, after he signed an executive order that would’ve done just that in August 2020 but was ultimately blocked by federal courts. Trump offered few explanations for his turnaround, though his GOP allies acknowledge the political opening it offers.

The real threat isn't that Trump's new position will snap up voters under 30, Democrats say, but it builds on already pressing concerns for Biden among young voters, who are particularly angry about his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

“These voters are not going to say, ‘this is my guy,’ but [Trump] wins if they stay disillusioned and stay home,” said a national Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “Between Gaza and banning TikTok, there’s a generation of voters here who feel completely left out of the political process. That’s the worry.”

The path to actually banning TikTok is far from certain. The legislation that may emerge from the Senate — and how fast it might come out — isn’t clear, though Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), who lead the Senate Intelligence Committee, endorsed the House bill after the vote on Wednesday. If it became law, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, would have six months to find a buyer. Without a buyer, the app could be banned as early as October 2024, the month before the general election.

“I don’t see a world in which TikTok gets removed from everyone’s phone in the next 8 months because our government doesn’t work that fast,” said Keith Edwards, a Democratic strategist, who added that a potential ban won’t affect voters until it actually goes into effect, which could drag past November 2024.

“These things don’t become real for voters until they actually happen,” Edwards said.

Biden has been walking a fine line with TikTok already. Last year, the White House gave federal agencies 30 days to wipe the app off all government devices out of concerns about the national security risk it posed. A majority of states have banned TikTok on government devices. This week, Biden’s intelligence agencies held closed-door meetings with congressional members, briefing lawmakers on the global risks of the app, including meddling in U.S. elections.

But in February, the Biden campaign joined TikTok, posting a video of the president answering Super Bowl-themed questions. They’ve also mounted an aggressive influencer strategy, briefing nearly 70 progressive content creators ahead of Biden’s State of the Union and aiming to tap into their enormous online audience. The Democratic National Committee has also worked with social media influencers to push out the party’s message over the last several election cycles.

The campaign said it is taking security precautions in its use of the app. And a Biden campaign adviser argued that their youth turnout program isn’t overly dependent on TikTok, pointing to their presence on other social media platforms. The adviser also cited their youth organizing efforts on college campuses. The Biden campaign recently launched a Students For Biden initiative, including endorsements from 15 youth mobilization groups.

“Young voters are critical to President Biden’s winning coalition,” Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez said in a statement announcing the endorsements.

But Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen-Z for Change — which started as TikTok for Biden, an account that galvanized voters on the platform during the 2020 campaign — said that both the administration and campaign seem to understand the power of TikTok. Because of that, he added, it didn’t seem “logical” that the administration could say that the app needs to be sold or banned.

“[It’s] a major example that I think a lot of young people would take as proof that Biden is just out of touch with young people,” he said, of the decision to support the forced sale legislation.

Harry Sisson, a 21-year-old progressive influencer with nearly a million followers on TikTok, raised his concerns directly with his audience on Wednesday, cutting a video in front of the Capitol Building: “For Democrats, I think this is a very bad idea to do in an election year.”

"TikTok is in good part why President Biden won [in 2020] — there were so many youth that came out for him," said V Spehar, who anchors news videos on TikTok and has attended influencer events at the White House. "They're starting to slip in their hopes and beliefs that that respect is reciprocated."

Biden has struggled to appeal to young voters during his first term, after they turned out to back him in record numbers in 2020. His approval rating with people aged 18-30 dropped to the lowest point seen by a Democratic president in decades in 2023, hovering in the mid- to low-30s. His position on the Israel-Hamas war, which has low approval with voters under 30, has also threatened his standing with them.

“There are gaping holes between what young people think Biden has done and what he has actually done, so to the degree to which this would strip away a path to close that information gap — that’s detrimental to Biden and Democratic candidates,” said John Della Volpe, a pollster who focuses on young voters and worked on Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Della Volpe did, however, note that national security “comes first.”

“It’s not insurmountable, but it’s another brick in the backpack for those trying to reach young voters,” Della Volpe said.

Other Democrats argue that the party faces a messaging challenge with young voters, so it’s on them to “explain the why” of the legislation, said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who voted “present” on the House bill.

“I absolutely believe it will not make young voters happy, but I don’t think of them as a monolith, nor do I think of them as single issue voters,” Crockett said. “I think that young people, especially Gen Z … will do an overall cost benefit analysis of the two teams and decide which has their back and it’s clear that only one team is fighting for them — the blue team.”

Hailey Fuchs, Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.