In a matter of days, one of the most popular social media apps in the country could be forced

to pull the plug.

That's if the Supreme Court doesn't grant it a legal reprieve.

John Yang is here to explore TikTok's legal battle and its looming deadline to cut its ties

with China.

Jeff, while the justices heard arguments over the looming U.S. TikTok ban inside the court,

outside, some influencers gathered on the steps to live stream their support for the platform.

There are more than 170 million TikTok users in the United States.

That's about half the population.

In last year's presidential campaign, both candidates used it to court young voters.

But concerns about its Chinese ownership led Congress to pass a law that would ban it in the

United States on January 19th unless its parent company sells it. Bobby Allen covers technology

for NPR and Marsha Coyle is PBS News Supreme Court analyst.

Bobby, let me start with you.

What does this law actually do on the 19th?

The TikTok lawyer today kept saying that TikTok would go dark.

Is that an overstatement?

Yeah, on January 19th, Apple and Google will be legally forced to remove TikTok from

app stores, and that means new users can't download it and

bite dance in China will not be able to send the app software updates. Also, web hosting services

that provide back-end support for TikTok will have to severize. That means it's not going to have

any cloud support. That's going to be a huge problem for all of the people taking videos, commenting,

...