Having some amount of utility doesn't contradict it possibly being used for nefarious purposes by it's owners though. If I intentionally wanted to design an information warfare weapon, I'd make sure to sugarcoat it with interesting/funny/useful content to make it palatable. Just like putting the soldiers inside a giant wooden horse.
Not that I really care enough to ban TikTok, but the value demonstrated here is pretty spurious. You could swap "TikTok" with "socializing", and I'm sure these people would've had similar outcomes.
Socializing is indeed of great value to people; not at all spurious. You're helping prove OP's point.
And OP didn't even mention all the small businesses that took off due to TikTok giving them an avenue. This notion that people have to dismiss TikTok as merely mindless dopamine is really just wilful ignorance.
My point is that none of this is truly dependent on the existence of TikTok, which OP does not be seeming to be arguing, even slightly. The internet is a revolving door of gathering spaces that enable people to do nice things for each other. People can do nice things for each other anywhere, even when surrounded by the digital equivalent of two-way mirrors.
Citizens have a right to assemble and speak to each other. Foreign corporations don't have a right to own the feeds of huge swaths of the population. Hence the rules around newspaper and TV ownership.