Difficulties Following People

I managed to actively stay off of TikTok for about seven years because I don’t like being on my phone as it is, and I didn’t want another app to distract me. I have caved as of yesterday, and I am actually excited to. Unfortunately, I literally cannot follow my friends. My friends are excited. They’re following me. It’s been about eight people, and I’ve only been able to successfully follow back half of them. I press follow, it changes to following, and then it changes to request to follow again, as if I never followed them in the first place. I know this is a minor issue, but it’s kind of a big deal to me. Is anyone experiencing this issue/has in the past?
I looked it up online and it said that an account can be flagged for suspicious activity of being a bot if they make an account and follow a bunch of people. However, I don’t think following five people qualifies for suspicious activity. I made a technical report problem to TikTok through the app, and I know this is so dumb guys, but it’s just a big deal to me that I’ve waited so long to download an app that acts like this.