Congressman Dale Strong said Wednesday that people should stay off TikTok – the popular social media app whose parent company is based in China.

State governments have been prohibiting the downloading of TikTok on government devices in recent weeks and the shooting down earlier this month of a Chinese balloon believed to be spying on the U.S. has only heightened concerns.

“I support banning it,” Strong said. “But the thing that we need is parents and people from here just to stop using it. You don’t need government to tell you that TikTok is a threat to America. Everybody here knows that is a platform that is taking U.S. information to the Chinese government, to the Chinese people. And again, they’re watching everything that we do. But it shouldn’t take government making this move. The people of America ought to take the move themselves.”

Gov. Kay Ivey in December instituted a ban on TikTok use on government devices and networks and other states have made similar moves as well as the federal government. Auburn University is among colleges across the countries that have outlawed TikTok on its systems.

Prior to her election, U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama on Twitter described TikTok as a “trojan horse.”

And in January, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Congressman Joe Buck of Colorado, both Republicans, introduced legislation that would ban any downloading of TikTok in the country. The bill also prohibits transactions with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.

“TikTok poses a threat to all Americans who have the app on their devices. It opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting. Banning it on government devices was a step in the right direction, but now is the time to ban it nationwide to protect the American people,” Hawley said in a statement last month.

TikTok has more than a billion users worldwide with its popularity being the highest in the 16-24 age group.

Given how the video sharing app appears firmly imbedded in American culture, how realistic is it to urge people to stop using it?

“I think that what will happen is whenever it affects somebody personally, that’s when they’re going to want more government,” Strong said. “In many cases, people want less government. ‘Let us have whatever platform we want.’ But whenever you start talking about other countries taking an app and taking that data and compiling it and using it against the people of our country, that’s when it’s a little different situation.”

Strong also drew a connection between TikTok and the Chinese balloon.

“A lot of that ties in together,” Strong said. “We’ve got to protect our country. We’ve got to put America first.”