It is difficult to shake the suspicion that the advocates of banning TikTok are using it as pretext for their real goals. It wouldn't be so terrible if their real goals were limited to just restricting social media in general, but beyond that...

The real benefit of having a Congress for broader society is that it forces at least partial exposure of these unmentioned goals.

In that sense the federal government is a wonderful invention, but the drawbacks are so many that it doesn't seem all that wonderful overall.