How TikTok Revolutionized Social Media
DANIEL BANIN, PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA
Eyes down, teenager’s thumbs mindlessly swipe on the screen of their phones. Time speeds up: seconds become minutes and minutes become hours.
Their time is spent on TikTok, an app that has seen a monumental rise in users in the past years. TikTok has revolutionized the use of short content, reshaping the way time is spent on social media. But it was not always this way. In fact, six years ago, TikTok did not even exist.
In 2017, TikTok bought the already popular app Musically, which already had 200 million users. TikTok expanded what Musically had started; the ability to watch short and easily digestible content lasting on average 15 seconds.
Many of my peers say that If they were given an hour a day to spend on TikTok, they would do it.
They are not alone. According to Statista, TikTok recently eclipsed one billion active users. Facebook, the most popular social media platform today, has around 2.91 billion active users.
It took the company about 18 years to achieve this number of users. In a little under five years, TikTok has now reached over one billion users.
“Short content is defined as a clip that is short enough to keep your attention but long enough to arrive at a point”, said Vaughn Khourhi, who is currently researching TikTok and its effects on teens. “This typically means that the videos span between 15 seconds and one minute.”
According to CNN Business, there have been multiple studies to determine how TikTok works. Most of these studies found that TikTok follows a psychological principle called random reinforcement. Similar to a slot machine, TikTok’s endless queue of videos always has you questioning what will come next. What keeps teenager hooked is the feeling of not knowing
whether it’s going to be some really cool video or if it has something cute or something that’ll make them laugh. This is probably part of the reason why TikTok is so addictive. Many of my friends feel that being on tik tok makes them feel part of a bigger community. Seeing what other teenagers are doing around the world is a way to stay connected, but it is also a way of learning about different cultural preferences among teens around the world.
A Student uses Tiktok during class