A potential ban on TikTok is complicated by the app’s immense popularity in U.S.

With its immense popularity, TikTok has become the most widely used smartphone application in the United States, making the U.S. government’s proposed ban on the app a daunting task. The challenge faced by lawmakers is to convince the millions of individuals and businesses that rely on the app that the national security risks posed by TikTok are significant enough to justify the ban.

Apptopia’s data reveals that the TikTok app, which merged with the U.S. lip-syncing app Musical.ly in August 2018, has been downloaded more frequently than any other social application in the United States. In fact, according to eMarketer, the app is projected to generate more than $11 billion in advertising revenue by 2024, surpassing its competitors like Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter by a significant margin. Moreover, TikTok has generated significantly higher revenue from in-app purchases, such as the coins that fans use to tip their favorite content creators, than its rivals, as per Apptopia.

Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, is scheduled to make his debut Congressional testimony on Thursday, and he plans to highlight the app’s growth in his remarks. The House committee, which Chew will address, released the prepared statements on Tuesday night. According to Axios, TikTok now boasts more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., compared to the 100 million users it initially reported in 2020, as confirmed by the company’s executives.

Chew is also expected to highlight the app’s support for small businesses, a point that tech competitors like Google and Meta have also emphasized in the face of regulatory pressure. In a TikTok video posted on Tuesday, Chew touted the app’s extensive reach, claiming that five million U.S. businesses, most of which are small or medium-sized, use TikTok to engage with their customers.

Surveys suggest that the public remains split mainly on whether TikTok should be banned by the government, with Republicans more inclined to support a ban than Democrats. Those who oppose the ban contend that the government should provide more concrete evidence to demonstrate that TikTok poses a national security risk before compelling its Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell to a U.S. firm or face a ban. In contrast, those who advocate for action against TikTok contend that the app poses a threat to the privacy of U.S. user data owing to Chinese laws that mandate Chinese companies to share user data with the Chinese government.

TikTok’s U.S. technology rivals have been biding their time, hoping their TikTok imitators – including Facebook and Instagram’s Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat’s Spotlight – could gain some market share from TikTok in the event of a ban. These platforms were all launched after former President Trump proposed banning TikTok in 2020, and many of them have grown considerably.

Last month, Google announced that YouTube Shorts has surpassed 50 billion daily views. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced last month that Reels playbacks on Facebook and Instagram “have more than doubled in the last year,” and that the number of people sharing Reels “has more than doubled on both apps in just the last six months.”