COUNTDOWN SOCIAL MEDIA SENSATION

SENSATION

SOCIAL SENSATION MEDIA

An in-depth look of the popularity of TikTok among students.

by Nate Bittner & Hari Rao

design by Kritin Shanmugam

Graphics by Audrey Carter

“Basically anywhere you’ll find people watching or making TikToks.” J ameson Pecilunas is setting up her phone against the wall. She turns on the camera and puts on a smile. She runs to her friends who are already in front of the camera, and they start flailing their arms around as heavy base vibrates from the phone and the music yells “renegade, renegade.” They finish their TikTok and, in a couple taps, upload it in the app, and they all watch their views go up, anxious to see if their TikTok goes viral. What is TikTok?

TikTok, like Vine, is an app for creating and sharing short videos. Similar to other social media, TikTok users have a feed where they can scroll to see endless content recommended to them by TikTok’s algorithm. The algorithm suggests videos based on other content users have viewed and liked. TikTok videos, like Snapchat, have filters that creators can use. Creators are able to interact with others’ TikToks through “duets” or a “response” video. In the app, users can search for songs or sounds to make videos with. TikTok was not always popular. According to Oberlo, TikTok rose to fame all across the world, most notably in 2019, where it amassed more than 1 billion downloads as of January of 2019 and retained J J

Johnny Taylor an average of 500 million monthly users. Sanskruti Patel, social studies teacher, knows of TikTok and has watched a few to understand the main idea of TikTok. “I think it’s a way for people to gain popularity like a lot of social media platforms,” Patel said. “It’s about being clever and getting someone’s attention.” Who Uses TikTok?

TikTok as an app has widespread viewership with more than 500 million users. This places the fairly new app at the ninth most used across all social media sites. Putting it up in the ranks with long time app veterans such as Twitter and Facebook. With its large numbers, TikTok also has found itself with a widely diverse user base. Apptrace reported that

18 | Features the app can be found in 154 different countries as well as many Asian countries close to the apps developers in China. In a survey at Central, out of 108 responses, 70.4% of students said they use TikTok. When asked which gender they thought used TikTok more, students gave a response with girls getting 54.6%, and equal participation getting 45.4%. The faces on TikTok don’t stop at Central either, 74.1% of those who use the app said they know people around school who were or still are popular on TikTok. Some students have noticed the age gap that has developed on TikTok. While many consider the creators on the app to be older in age, they still keep in mind the large percentage of viewers include the high school age group. Why are People Using TikTok?

Genny Haarlow, senior, previously owned an account that accumulated more than 100,000 followers. Haarlow calls TikTok “the New Vine.” Vine, a social media app acquired by Twitter in 2012, allowed creators to share six-second videos and became a popular social media because viewers were provided with a continuous source of funny, silly or creative content which they could watch as many times as they wanted. However, because of business challenges with other competitors, the company could not make enough money off their app, causing it to eventually shut down on January 17, 2017. “[The reason TikTok is popular is] the same reason that Vine blew up,” Haarlow said. “There is an endless supply of these short-snippet videos that plays to your short attention span with whatever content you want.” Johnny Taylor, junior, explained why he thinks the app has become so popular. Taylor owns an account with 75 followers where he makes humorous-styled videos. “It’s just like any other social media app, it’s just staying with trends,” Taylor said. “A lot of people understand the memes (jokes) that come with it.” Some may argue that people use TikTok in order to acquire fame. Patel talked about an observation she made on this topic, which may account for the fact that, according to MediaKix, 60.4% of users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24. “Something that I found interesting is that there seems to be more of an interest in becoming internet famous in [today’s youth] rather than from my generation,” Patel said. On the other hand, Haarlow stated that she created a TikTok one day during her summer break because she was bored and saw it as an outlet for enjoyment. She said that she never created TikTok for fame but rather for fun and to pass time. “I thought that the whole concept was stupid but [my sister] told me I could make one and probably get famous,” Haarlow said. “She told me ‘honestly, you don’t even need to have talent you just need to be decently good looking and you can be famous,’ so as a joke, I created one.” Through TikTok’s algorithm, users randomly have their videos become popular, leading to them gaining a significant following. There have been multiple instances of students having their videos go viral or even resulting in gaining a significant following. “After a week of posting videos, all of a sudden one [TikTok] blew up,” Haarlow said. “From there, I consistently started gaining more followers and more attention.” Users may find many famous creators who create TikToks for fame and status, such as Charli D’Amelio, a young TikTok celebrity with more than 19 million followers. Influencers on the app like her cause fans to want to make TikToks in order to also become famous. Since TikTok’s algorithm is meant to recommend users TikToks based off of what they like, Haarlow said she believes there are multiple ways to earn a significant influence. “The biggest thing that gets you a following is that you have to find your niche, or the type of content that is best suited for you,” Haarlow said. “You have a lot of attractive guys posting videos that they want attention from, but then you have people who post comedy, art or aesthetic videos.” In the survey sent out by Devils’ Advocate, 79.6% answered that they see humorous TikToks, while 59.3% see dancing, and 17.6% see educational/informative videos. “TikToks can be kind of making fun of an idea or someone else’s TikToks,” said Christine Kouria, a junior who owns an account with more than 15,000 followers. “But there are also those that talk about current issues in the world, like the Muslims held in Chinese camps and the Australian fires.” Concerns

The Devils’ Advocate survey found that 51.9% of students said they believed that TikTok was a bad thing for students. Many participants in the survey stated

that TikTok was a waste of time, and that they found the app to be very addicting as well as distracting for students. Haarlow said she has seen multiple politically-charged videos on TikTok. As these types of posts anywhere on social media start arguments and garner attention, she said she believes the same thing happens on TikTok. “If one of those really famous creators decided to take a stance on a specific political issue, climate issue, or really whatever they say, a lot of their followers would blindly agree with him or her,” Haarlow said. “I’ve seen chains of videos supporting Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, and TikTok is polarized in that way.” Phillip Fan, senior, is a creator on TikTok with more than 33,000 followers. Despite many creators being aware of their young audience, he tells of how creators will still exploit this. “Being honest, [kids] are the people that are more susceptible to not understanding sarcasm and a lot of the stuff targeted at them,” Fan said. Kouria also touched on the matter. She spoke about how being inexperienced with social media can lead to misconception. “I think it depends on how you interpret a lot of [TikToks]; most of them are sarcastic,” Kouria said. “If you’re younger, some TikToks might give you the wrong idea.” Kouria added that she often notices others teens on TikTok that try to exaggerate information in order to be controversial and get viral. With the multitude of users of TikTok, and the random probability of users able to go viral and gain influence on the app, some are starting to become more aware of what they are sharing on the app. “For me, the biggest thing I would think about [when I’d post] was what would my parents or grandparents say if they saw my video,” Haarlow said. “I wanted to be able to go to school the next day and not be really ashamed by something I posted on TikTok.” Haarlow eventually deleted her TikTok because her parents were worried for her safety and privacy. “It was really overwhelming — I am not the kind of person who likes that much attention,” Haarlow said. “The last week that I had my account, I went from [having] 50,000 followers to 104,000 followers in six days.”

Taylor spoke out about his own experiences with time management. “[TikTok] wastes a lot of time and it’s

Provided by Sofija Buzelis TikTok has accumulated more than 1 billion downloads and supports a variety of content.

@jamdowg @ayypatrick @aaronlajoie

like other social media apps: it burns more time and it’s really addicting,” Taylor said. Taylor went on to talk about the effect TikTok has had on the rest of the school, including where he has seen the plethora of trends and dances. “People watch it basically anywhere, they just put in their earphones and just watch it,” Taylor said. “Today I saw two girls doing this dance on TikTok and their microphone volume was all the way up so it was kind of annoying.” Many students have noticed the endless dances and videos at different places around the school. In the Devils’ Advocate survey, students said the most common places to see TikToks made live would be in the bathrooms and cafeteria. Students say phones have been seen propped up in the hallways and even during class. However, the popularity isn’t limited to just the school. Taylor, who has been on TikTok for a few months has noticed the reach of the app’s influence. “There are people that make TikToks in just random places,” Taylor said. “Basically anywhere you’ll find people watching or making TikToks.” TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. According to the New York Times, TikTok is under a national security review because of concerns that China could be spying on the U.S. through TikTok. “I think it was one of those things that freaked me out when I heard it, but nothing has happened yet to show that we should be worried about this,” Haarlow said.

Same old Story

The Devils’ Advocate survey shows that 20.4% spend 30 minutes to one hour and 25% of participants spend one to two hours viewing TikTok. Some question if it is beneficial for students to spend this much time on TikTok. “Is it bringing you entertainment or is it a mindless [activity],” Patel said. “Sometimes you need something kind of mindless to relax.” Some ideas have circulated that there should be age restrictions on TikTok in order to prevent anything bad from happening to the younger audience who are exposed to more mature humor and videos in general. However, it is possible for a user to fake their age simply by using a parent’s account or faking their birthdate. Kouria offered a potentially more effective alternative to age restrictions. “I think there should be something where you put in your age, and TikTok curates the content for those age groups,” Kouria said. “That way younger viewers can’t get hurt.” Haarlow capitalized on the point that while social media can be fun, users need to be cautious and remember the big picture of it.

“Every single thing you do is scrutinized and people will find your little slip-ups and expose you for it; people look for reasons to dislike you,” Haarlow said. Creators like Haarlow have learned and kept in mind what has been the age old lesson with social media. “Anything you do or say on the Internet is there forever,” Haarlow said.

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