From the Renegade to the Supreme Court: A Timeline of TikTok’s Rise and Fall
The New York Times
What started as “the dance app” spawned countless memes, launched lucrative careers and shaped entire industries. Here’s how it got here.
In its infancy, TikTok was often described as an app for teenagers’ dance videos. In 2025, it’s a juggernaut with 170 million users in the United States and, according to the Justice Department, a national security threat that must be eliminated.
The platform’s path from a whimsical dance app to the target of a federal ban has been dotted with recipes, niche drama, micro trends, new entries into the popular lexicon and overnight megastars — as well as legal troubles, Senate hearings and, finally, a widely watched Supreme Court case.
Here’s a timeline of the app’s meteoric rise, and a reminder of the videos that dominated your algorithm, whether you wanted them to or not.
Zhang Yiming, a Chinese entrepreneur, founds ByteDance. He reportedly sketched the rough concept for what would become TikTok on the back of a napkin.
Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang launch Musical.ly. The co-founders pivoted the platform from an education app to a lip-sync app, allowing users to make 15-second videos singing along to popular songs.
