The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law to ban the social media app TikTok and said its Chinese owner ByteDance must cease operations in the U.S. on Sunday, Jan. 19, if it cannot sell TikTok by then.

The U.S. government believes TikTok is a threat to national security, harvesting users' data and spying. The ruling is meant to protect Americans from the influence of the Chinese government as well as safeguard their data.

TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States, including people who use it for fun and those who earn income from their posts. Three TikTok creators in metro Phoenix shared with The Arizona Republic what a ban would mean to their livelihoods and the community they have built on the app over the last few years.

@cafeemporos: TikTok 'leveled the playing field'

Ruben Trujillo, @cafeemporos from Goodyear, joined TikTok in September 2020 and has 42.3K followers. His content focuses on his product , a personalized packet with coffee inside.

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Shortly after joining TikTok, Trujillo had lost his online teaching job due to the stress of balancing work with his small business and becoming a full-time caregiver for his grandmother. Trujillo had been in business for himself for about five years and nothing was sticking. For a month he didn’t know what he was going to do.

“I hit like true rock bottom. I had failed,” Trujillo said. “I had never been fired before from a job. My business wasn’t where I wanted it to be.”

Trujillo had only posted about 20 TikToks when he decided to share a video about a product called the Coffee Gram – two customizable packets of coffee inside plus a greeting card with photos and messages uploaded by customers.

The next day, he woke to 300 likes but zero sales. Someone commented on his video, suggesting he change his personal profile to a business one because he was going to go viral. So before he got into his car, he said a prayer, changed his profile to a business account and added a link to his website.

His video started going viral as he drove. His phone's Bluetooth was on and Trujillo says he vividly remembers the Shopify notification that made his car sound like a “slot machine” every time it made a sale.

By the time he got to his destination, Trujillo had 300 sales. A week later he told his family that he had lost his job but found a solution. He would post on TikTok again and if he could make $5,000 in sales then he would keep on posting.

Within five hours of that next post, Trujillo had hit $5,600 in sales. He went first viral on Nov. 5 and by the beginning of December he had made $25,000. He realized he was building a community.

“As an entrepreneur, it's about bouncing back,” Trujillo said. “TikTok was that variable in that it kind of leveled the playing field. I needed a lot of people to see my product. I showed it, it resonated with a lot of people, and it kind of just took off from there.

“But I will never forget that feeling of my car making those noises.”

@alexanderjaneboutique: 'Nothing reaches our audience like TikTok does'

Sarah Babiarz, @alexanderjaneboutique from Mesa, joined TikTok in the spring of 2022. She makes promotional fashion content, sharing her products and clothing with her 502.6K followers.

Similarly to Trujillo, Babiarz started posting on TikTok because her business was failing. She initially started posting for fun but the app ended up saving her business.

“We have just reached our target audience,” Babiarz said. “The algorithm has picked up exactly who wants to shop from us and distributes our content way faster than any other social media platform ever has.

"I've been a social seller on Facebook and Instagram since 2017, so I've tried all of the platforms. I've tried all of the resources and nothing reaches our audience like TikTok has.”

@thelinzytaylor: 'When I go live, that loneliness disappears'

Linzy Taylor, @thelinzytaylor from Surprise, joined TikTok in June 2019 as a family content creator.

Now, with 1.9 million followers, she posts about entertainment, lifestyle, comedy and her small business Harrizona Dream , which makes waterproof stickers using her autistic and nonverbal son’s digital art patterns. She also has delved into crochet items.

Taylor said she felt lost in 2019. One of her sons had just gotten a bone marrow transplant and they were already living in isolation before the pandemic happened to keep him safe. On top of that, her family had just moved to Arizona from Connecticut and they didn’t know anybody.

She really started posting in 2020 and found a sense of community through live streams, sometimes spending up to 16 hours on a live stream. A follower suggested tucking her son’s art into a sticker. Taylor, a graphic designer, found a way to do that and her live streams started to transform into a “beautiful business.”

She has a blended family, living with her husband and her ex-husband for the sake of their two autistic kids, and that’s part of what built her audience.

“But even in a house full of seven people, as a mother and as a woman, just figuring out who I am, I've been really lonely,” Taylor said. “And when I turn on TikTok, and when I go live, that loneliness disappears, and I'm with my chosen family. And sometimes that means more, you know?”

A ban on TikTok would be ‘devastating’

Thanks to his TikTok fame, Trujillo has been contacted by NPR, sold coffeegrams to customers ranging from Genesis Motor to brides for their weddings, received grants from Arizona State University and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and been invited to events the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference.

“When I think about the past, when I was at the farmers markets and I was really struggling, to this, TikTok was that catalyst for my business,” Trujillo said.

When people suggest that he just move to another app, Trujillo says starting over is easier said than done.

“What makes TikTok unique, in my opinion, is, yes, the algorithm and all that stuff, but TikTok came along at a time that we were yearning for connection, and we were all stuck at home, and we were able to connect to people through creativity,” Trujillo said.

Babiarz said a TikTok ban would have a devastating impact on her business.

“We're doing 89% of our revenue from TikTok, and we saw a lot of growth from 2022 with TikTok,” Babiarz said.

"We got a new warehouse in Mesa, we have a higher rent, we have 13 employees that we're paying. In 2024 alone, we spent a million dollars on postage in our Mesa ZIP code. That has got to support multiple postal workers, jobs, FedEx, UPS, USPS.

"So, if we lose TikTok, I am not sure that my business will be able to survive because our overhead has grown so much because we were keeping up with the demand that TikTok brought us, and we just won't have that demand anymore.”

'It’s just so heartbreaking, and I worry for everyone'

Taylor grew a massive autism community on TikTok, including caregivers and autistic people. She herself was diagnosed with autism at age 37. TikTok allowed her to share alternative parenting methods, such as allowing drawing on the walls.

Taylor said her relationship with her followers felt very reciprocal and she felt less alone.

“I'd just show up for my community because I needed them,” Taylor said. “And so many of them have let me know over the years that through the pandemic, they were less alone because I was a voice in the room.”

Eventually, she joined the TikTok Creator Fund, which allowed her to pay bills around and keep her family afloat.

She cried a lot when she first heard about banning TikTok. She worried about putting food on the table, and she worried about her own and others' mental health.

“People come here for a break,” Taylor said. “People come here because they're alone. People come here because they're in recovery, and they have a community. There's so many single moms out there who are putting groceries on their table, and this is the only way to do that because they can't afford child care.

“It’s just so heartbreaking, and I worry for everyone.”

Arizona content creators believe TikTok ban is 'complete overreach'

If TikTok is indeed banned on Sunday, people will lose contact with their community, Trujillo said.

Trujillo said that immediately, people will lose contact with their community with the banning of TikTok. He said as a caregiver who spends a great deal at home caring for his mother and grandmother, TikTok allowed him to connect with the outside world.

Babiarz believes the concerns about TikTok are "complete overreach."

“The economic impact that it will have is just so great and honestly unmeasurable because of businesses like mine that are using and growing with TikTok,” Babiarz said.

And Taylor said there’s so much good that happens through TikTok.

She received an outpouring of kindness from her community after her son ran out of baby food and his brand was out of stock. She posted a video saying she said would do tube feeds instead. Within a short time, followers from all over had sent over 600 pouches of food to her son.

Life after TikTok: 'It's going to be tough'

Trujillo has tried Instagram but it wasn’t working for his small business. He said he will probably return to that platform but he expects to lose a lot of sales. TikTok is his main source of income, but if it does get banned, he will take time to breathe and reassess.

He said he’s hit rock bottom before with his business.

“Small business owners, we’re resilient. We’ll figure it out,” Trujillo said. “But it’s going to be tough.”

If TikTok isn't banned on Sunday, Babiarz will proceed as usual. She's taking hundreds, sometimes thousands, of orders a day on the app.

“TikTok Shop is a unique ecosystem in itself. They've really set it up to protect consumer data, protect consumers in a way that as a seller, I don't have access to individual customer information the same way that I do if you go onto my own website,” Babiarz said.

If TikTok is banned, Taylor will pivot to Instagram, YouTube and Neptune when that drops. She also uses Substack but would prefer to keep TikTok.

“TikTok is my home, and I think it's a home for so many,” Taylor said. “Yes, there's other apps, but there's no other app like TikTok.”

Reach the reporter at . Follow @dina_kaur on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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