TikTok will be banned within a mile of every single UK uni campus starting next week

But how else am I gonna procrastinate in the lib now?

1 month ago

TikTok will be banned within a mile of every single UK university from next week, The Tab can exclusively reveal.

This comes after a group of disgruntled Vice-Chancellors from 13 Russell Group universities banded together and sent a letter to TikTok about the impact the app is having on student productivity.

They claim the app is too much of a distraction on campus, is ruining students’ attention spans and is actually having a huge negative impact on grades across the board.

Set to be officially announced by Education Minister Gillian Keegan in the coming days, the app will be banned on all Eduroam wifi networks as well as on all 4G cellular networks within a mile radius of all 166 universities in the UK. This will be put in place from next week.

A snippet from the Vice Chancellors’ letter to TikTok seen by The Tab reads: “As stewards of higher education, it is our responsibility to safeguard the academic pursuits and wellbeing of our students, and recent developments have compelled us to address the adverse impact of TikTok on our campuses.

“TikTok’s presence has disrupted the sanctity of our educational environments, with students surreptitiously engaging with the app during class time, thereby undermining the integrity of our teaching and learning processes. Lecturers and seminar leaders report instances of diminished classroom participation and heightened disengagement, attributing these trends directly to the allure of TikTok.” Yikes.

Snippet of the VCs’ letter, obtained by The Tab

Nick Morrison, a librarian at The University of Exeter agrees with the ban and has spoken about his first-hand experiences with the app causing disruption on campus. “I’ve worked as a university librarian for close to 20 years now and never in all these years have I seen as big a distraction as TikTok,” he said.

“Just when the library is getting close to its busiest time and students are fighting over desks, you take a walk around and see student after student just aimlessly scrolling on their phones, laptops firmly closed in front of them. This is not even to mention the chaos that students filming TikToks on campus are also having.”

“Just last week I was busy doing my filing and tripped over a group of girls filming some sort of dance. In the library! And this wasn’t even the first time. It’s about time they put a stop to all of this.”

One Vice Chancellor who has been a key figure in pushing through the ban told The Tab: “The impact that TikTok has had on this current generation of students is astronomical and should not be underestimated. Not only is it distracting students from their academic study, but it has also led to a significant decline in attention spans, impeding students’ ability to focus during lectures and seminars. This has resulted in diminished academic performance, as evidenced by a noticeable decline in grades and overall student outcomes.

“I’ve also received reports from a number of my lecturers who also suggest the number of students actively using the app during teaching hours has boomed in recent months. My staff have had enough of students blasting out ‘When I’m back in Chicago’ in the middle of their important lectures so we finally decided that enough is enough.”

He finished: “Myself and the other VCs really hope this ban will create a marked change in student experience, grades, productivity and mental health and improve the university experience for all parties.”

The announcement is likely to provoke controversy following students up and down the country who just want to watch all their sad hamster memes in peace. We can’t have anything anymore!

You should probably check the date, you April fools!