Blog #4: Tik Tok

 Blog Post 4

Tik Tok

With over 2 billion downloads, the social media app, Tik Tok, grew as an international social media competitor to brands like Facebook and Instagram. It is valued at over 100 billion dollars and has an average of 1.5 billion active monthly users. The original app, Musical.ly, was founded by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in August of 2014. It was introduced to the US and China as a musical and comedy video app. Musical.y then surpassed their competitors, becoming the most popular app on the Apple Store. After this rise in popularity, the founder of ByteDance, a Chinese Internet company, Zhang Yuming, bought Musical.ly on November 9th of 2017 for so1 billion dollars. Yuming then renamed the app to Douyin and went international, naming the US version ‘Tik Tok’. (Life Hack Lion)

It appears to me that this innovation did not actually solve a specific problem. Rather, the Chinese entrepreneurs who helped build it were able to identify how this crossover of digital creativity and digital socializing was particularly engaging to young iPhone users. While I am not sure that there was a problem that was left to solve, I feel more confident in saying there was a gap in the market that simple photo sharing on Facebook or Instagram didn’t cover. While you could share videos of shorter length on these apps, the intent behind most of these posts were for sharing some aesthetic visuals like nature or travel. The intention behind using Tik Tok is associated more with self expression and individuality. 

Most videos on my friends' accounts today are silly posts that they would never share on Instagram. Many Tik Tok influencers have been quick to comment recently on how people are “too comfortable on this app”. This is such an important point to think about. Our generation has been raised with the uprise of social media. I think I was 14 when I made my first Instagram post. This being said, we’ve been raised with the looming subconscious pressure that comes with publicizing our lives. For whatever reason, Tik Tok’s playful and creative platform and tools make the app carry lower stakes than Instagram, changing how this generation communicates with their community and the broader internet world when it comes to being vulnerable or themselves. 

However there are some obvious negative side effects that accompany Tik Tok’s rise in popularity, one being its addictive nature. While almost all social media apps or apps in general have the capacity to be addictive, Tik Tok’s short video model and effortless scrolling layout makes a perfect storm for young people to scroll for hours. In 2018 the company released an addiction reduction feature. This means that when a user spends roughly an hour and 40 minutes on the app, Tik Tok will queue a video that will encourage the user to take a break, get some fresh air, or go to sleep. Kevser Xeynep Meral, an established Turkish author is quick to point out in his new book how Tik Tok poses an addiction risk for the young generation. He encourages parents and young users to educate themselves about the risks and ethical violations of social media (Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ethics in the Digital Era). 

What does this say about our younger generation’s tendencies to seek such high quantities of various qualities of entertainment? What do these habits reflect about their overall lifestyles? Furthermore, what does this mean for future generations, who will likely have even more access to even more content? How will this play out over the larger course of history?