U.S. Senator Josh Hawley wants to ban TikTok nationwide

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks during a right-wing gathering known as America Fest, an event organized by Turning Point USA, in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 18, 2022. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican and China hawk, said Tuesday that he would introduce a bill to ban the short video app TikTok in the United States.

TikTok, whose parent is the Chinese company ByteDance, already faces a ban that would stop federal employees from using or downloading TikTok on government-owned devices.

“TikTok is China’s backdoor into Americans’ lives. It threatens our children’s privacy as well as their mental health,” he said on Twitter. “Now I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide.”

Hawley did not say when the bill would be introduced.

READ: US Senate passes bill to bar federal employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices

TikTok said in a statement that Hawley was taking the wrong approach.

“Senator Hawley’s call for a total ban of TikTok takes a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms,” said spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter.

“We hope that he will focus his energies on efforts to address those issues holistically, rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he’s concerned about or make Americans any safer.”

READ: TikTok bans hit more US states; security firm says most access blocked globally