Kevin's take on this is more or less where I stand. For context, I work in software development, though not in data/personal information management so I'm not an expert on this topic in particular.
Anyway, it's my understanding that there are a couple of issues here:
1. The US government would like better access to the information that TikTok gathers from its users, like they have with Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. TikTok being owned by a Chinese company greatly complicates this. This is the main purpose of the bill/the push to force a sale of TikTok.
2. Many people under 30 years old get a significant amount of their information from TikTok. A lot of kids basically use TikTok as a replacement for Google - as a search engine - which is strange because it's more of a social media platform. Anyway, there's some McCarthy-esq handwringing over this and the general idea that TikTok is an evil communist propaganda tool that is brainwashing the children. We see this kind of alarmism every generation - it was Rock and Roll, MTV, and video games that were responsible for corrupting the youth, and now it's TikTok. This is a convenient smokescreen for some potentially insidious stuff (see #1).
As Kevin mentions, the government
really should not be looking to control what websites we can visit or what applications we are able to install on our phones, aside from cases where the sites or apps in question break some kind of law (drugs, trafficking, black-market, scams, etc). Not only is it a gross violation of our basic freedoms, it's not even remotely practical for the government to enact such policies. Even if one would like TikTok to be banned, the precedence it would set for the government's ability to control information and how private corporations are run is concerning.
Thankfully most people in the government don't know how to use computers, let alone how the internet or apps work, so the likelihood of this happening or being successful is quite low. Additionally, it seems unlikely that the Senate will act on the bill the House passed in any case. It's more political theatre than anything approaching governance, as is all too common with bills that leave the House.