“TikTok will change the way your social media works — even if you’re avoiding it”. With over a billion users worldwide, its popularity is unparalleled, something that hasn’t been seen in recent times. Whether you’re a “millennial” or a “boomer”, there is a very high likelihood that you have at least heard of, if not used, TikTok. The last app that perhaps inspired such interest from people that weren’t on it was…maybe Snapchat?
One cannot deny that TikTok has got a generation of young people hooked. Amidst growing concerns of cyberbullying and data privacy, apparently nothing seems to stop TikTok from clocking in numbers. In this article, we explore the ‘not so talked about’ side of TikTok.
TikTok is a mobile app that allows users to create and share short, 5 to 60 second, videos. It’s essentially a music and lip syncing service. On TikTok, one can watch and create videos, add music, interact with other users and spend virtual coins. Users are also strongly encouraged to engage with other users, through “response” videos or by means of “duets” — users can duplicate videos and add themselves alongside.
The Beginning
In 2016, ByteDance launched a short-video app called Douyin in China. A year later, it spread to international markets, under the name TikTok. During this time, Musical.ly, another video-sharing app was already prominent in the United States. In November 2017, ByteDance purchased Musical.ly and later rebranded it as TikTok. Kevin Mayer is the current CEO of TikTok.
The app generates millions of dollars every year. Its sources of revenue include advertisements of other companies, in-app purchases like virtual currency and branded products. Its current net worth is around 100 billion dollars.
TikTok is a value proposition to its viewers, creators, and advertisers. In October of 2018, TikTok “surpassed the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat in number of new US downloads from both the Google Play and Apple App Store. But what is it about TikTok that makes it more appealing than its competitors?
The Phenomenon of TikTok
One of the reasons behind TikTok’s success is that its content is “customer centric” i.e it lets the audience choose what kind of content they wish to watch. When a user downloads the app, he/she must go through a survey which asks about the kind of content they are interested in and what they wouldn’t like to watch.
The company’s ad campaign is another reason for its success. One of the features of TikTok’s ad campaigns is that we can whitelist and blacklist audiences while creating a custom audience, which allows for better results for any marketing campaign. This feature has made it an instant hit among advertisers.
But arguably, one of the most important reasons behind its success is that TikTok’s content never slows down. New songs are released on a daily basis and new trends and “challenges” emerge every other day. With “around two-thirds of users under 30 years of age”, the app has successfully managed to tap the craze for fame and attention among Gen Z. ‘Content network effect’ refers to having users connect to each other to create new content. With democratized content and a large audience base, the app’s ability to make videos with no views viral and its ‘content network effect’ are two major contributing factors to its business boom. Today becoming “viral” on TikTok is one of the easiest ways to gain fame via the use of social media.
The driving force behind the outcome that we see today is the company’s unrelenting passion to better itself. They haven’t given up yet and don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
What's Good?
During late 2016, a young Charlie D’amelio registered her account on TikTok. A couple of months into using the application, primarily for showcasing her creative dance style, D’amelio, aged 12 at the time, began to catch traction as her videos were amassing thousands of daily views and her follower count began to skyrocket. Fast-forward to today, Charli D’amelio has surpassed 40 million followers on TikTok , making her one of the most followed icons on the app. The app was her platform or, more aptly, her stage into projecting her unique, high-tempo, and upbeat dance style to the world. Even though stardom has projected D’amelio into the spotlight of modern-day social influencers, she remains grounded and uses her voice to help spread positivity and kindness. D’amelio still attends high school in Connecticut, USA.
As a result of this rise in popularity among a lot of these TikTok icons, a certain ‘TikTok culture’ has been cultivated. This culture is a prime example of the ‘trend-setting’ nature of the app. It begins with a popular icon creating a new dance style or bringing light on a pressing issue. In addition to this, the app also helps independent and upcoming musical artists to gain a wider following as they have a higher likeliness for their music to be incorporated into various trends.
Beyond just entertainment purposes, the application has also stood for a podium for individuals to voice their opinions on social issues. With racial tensions occurring in The United States, a number of popular icons raised their concerns on the platform and encouraged others to do so.
Due to the recent prominence of the coronavirus outbreak, the application has had a dedicated page for updates regarding COVID-19. This helps spreading awareness among the users by disclosing trusted and creditable information relayed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
What's Bad?
41% of TikTok’s users are aged 16 to 24, making them more likely to experience depression, self-harm and poor body image. TikTok, in the hands of such prone users, is of great harm as it negatively moulds their minds.
A 16-year old TikToker from North Carolina confessed her daily struggles with the ‘eating disorder community’ on the app. The community glorifies anorexia as an excellent method to lose weight, instead of addressing it as a psychological disorder. TikTok also glamourises the use of recreational drugs which encourages viewers to try them out, often causing drug dependency, anxiety attacks and episodes of self-harm.
The app has created a generation of wannabe entertainers and influencers, giving the average high school student the illusion of a personal platform capable of launching them to TikTok fame, which for the vast majority is merely a pipedream.
TikTok has become an addiction for most teens. This addiction, while unhealthy, cannot entirely be attributed as the viewers’ fault as the app itself is designed to keep them glued to their screens. TikTok’s “For You” feature supplies a never-ending list of TikToks specifically selected for the user. In addition, the app doesn’t display the current time, making it only too easy to lose track of how long you’ve been mindlessly watching videos.
Disturbingly, several deaths worldwide have been connected to TikTok, with the majority of them being suicides after they were banned from using the app, highlighting a shocking addiction to the app.
The other deaths caused by TikTok have been linked to the dangerous trends that go viral on the platform. Take, for example, the Kiki challenge. A large number of TikTokers have been injured while attempting the challenge.
Another major issue in the app is the policy followed by TikTok moderators who are responsible for selecting videos for the influential ‘For You’ page which is the first thing users see when they open the app. While the selection criteria for this are kept a secret, documents leaked to the public revealed the superficial guidelines the moderators followed. TikTok’s moderators were instructed to exclude videos from the For You feed if it featured users with an “abnormal body shape”, who are “chubby, obese or too thin”, who have “facial disfigurements, autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome” and a variety of other different disabilities, from users in wheelchairs to amputees. People with disabilities are among the most underrepresented groups in media and decreasing their social media presence only increases the problem of people underestimating how prevalent disabilities truly are.
The fact that there is no verification of age is an issue of great concern as the highly impressionable minds of the young users are being moulded negatively by exposure to inappropriate content.
Thus, from promoting mental health disorders to encouraging discriminatory thinking, the negative impacts of TikTok are too significant to be ignored.
Tik Tok has faced controversies over the past few years and has been accused of crimes related to the privacy of the users. It is yet to disclose details to the public. We uncover for you the hidden details and revealed why and how your data is being stolen by TikTok.
While posting a video on the app, users more than often reveal their faces. TikTok reveals that it uses the biometric scan to collect data and with that data, it has access to your social network contacts, email, IP address, location etc. Now you might think that it doesn't matter that TikTok has your data, at least it’s in safe hands. But what you don’t know is that when Check Point (an Israeli tech company) launched an investigation regarding security, it found many holes in the system through which hackers could get to your data; and could use it against you.
Now Byte dance, TikTok’s parent company is headquartered in Beijing, China. But in 2017, China passed the National Intelligence Law that required companies in China to comply with intelligence-gathering operations if/when asked. This means whatever data of yours that Chinese companies store (no matter if you live in China or abroad), their government knows it too. This implies that data you stored on TikTok, is stored on China’s main server as well, making you a pawn of the government.
Because of such breaches, Bytedance had paid a total of 5.7 million USD for violation of the Child Online Protection Act (COPPA). With so much at risk, it's interesting to observe that people still use the app.
Since privacy concerns arose, many users have stopped using the app. Since the beginning of 2019, the TikTok algorithm has changed which is not liked by the users. Surveys on the same suggest that this bad decision was implemented due to less number of stakeholders. Even after the platform has achieved massive popularity, it hasn’t increased the number of stakeholders which had led to poor decisions. Arguably, the company reached its peak very early and then blew up.
There needs to be a massive change in its working for people to connect with it again. In order to win back public goodwill, they must agree that they have made mistakes, rectify them and must be transparent with their users. Else we think TikTok’s future looks bleak.
Bibliography
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html
https://medium.com/trapica/tiktok-ad-campaigns-how-it-works-c8ea8d545b1e