More and more government workers are being told to avoid TikTok.

But are they really?

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

TikTok is under a lot of scrutiny from federal, state, and local governments.

And lawmakers recently banned the social media platform from most federal government

devices, and more than a dozen states, including New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Texas,

have passed similar measures due to growing concerns over the data security and privacy

on the platform.

Joshua Scacco is associate chair of the University of South Florida's Department of Communication.

He says this black listing can make it harder for some, like researchers, to do their jobs.

So when we think about the rules, there will be various approaches that local, state, even

federal government will take with regard to essentially ban the use of TikTok on government

devices during business hours.

And these can take a couple of different forms.

So one is for the government employee who might be in 8 to 5 or a 9 to 5 during that period

of time, they cannot visit TikTok on their government devices.

Another possibility, which we've seen less of, although this is a potential worry as a researcher

who focuses on digital and social media, is that as part of conditions for these vans

or limitations, they could also spill over and affect research on the TikTok platform.

And one of the things we know is it's growing, it has millions of users, it is not only

a realm for information, but also for missing disinformation about politics and health.

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