Yesterday, I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride and Googled “What apps are the kids using?” The top articles were dated and mostly advice for parents monitoring their teens. My search terms apparently make me sound like a narc. I needed to ask someone on the inside.
It so happens I have teenaged cousins living in Switzerland and Canada. We keep in touch though Snapchat and Instagram. I Snapped them: “This is embarrassing, but what apps are you using? Give details. Needed for critical research.”
My youngest cousin gets back to me right away. Her reply is superimposed over a picture of her laughing, which does nothing for my ego. “I know about Tiktok but I don’t use it. It’s popular. It’s like Vine 2.0.” She goes on, “I just use Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp and Depop (to sell clothes).
The oldest replies by Snapchat voice message. She informs me that Facebook is not cool. She uses “Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram and, ummm… Pintrest?” The way she says Pintrest makes me think that it’s not very cool either. She’s heard of Twitch and says a lot of people use Tiktok, which she tells me “is so cringey.” I ask why. “Because the videos people post are just so… cringey! Anyway, it’s just like the new Musical.ly.”
Huh? What is Tiktok, besides the sound of me getting old? Is it like Vine or is it like Musical.ly? What is Musical.ly, anyway? Why is my 16-year-old cousin selling her clothes?
It turns out Tiktok, Vine and Musical.ly all allow users (who skew young) to create, edit and share short videos. Tiktok videos are a maximum of 15 seconds long. More on this later, but of the three, Tiktok is the only platform still around.
Tiktok’s trending videos mostly show kids dancing and lip-synching (unfortunately, it seems to the same five songs). I didn’t see the appeal. How was this different from other platforms? I scrolled the endless feed of dancing teens, challenges, crafts and cats.
Once I’d broken free, I read a few articles about Tiktok’s background in A.I. and how their algorithmically-driven content sets them apart from other social media. Their feed is less of a self-directed experience than one based purely on algorithmic observation and inference. Facebook and Instagram both do this to some extent but I’d argue the core experience is still driven by personal connections. It’s more akin to how YouTube uses algorithms to provide recommendations (you may be aware of the various problems with that). Essentially: the more you view, the more they learn what you like, the more they feed it to you… and the longer you stay glued to the platform.
This formula works. Tiktok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is valued at $75B and has surpassed Uber as the world’s most valuable startup. They have become China’s most popular social media export, with 1.3 billion downloads worldwide.
As I mentioned, Vine and Musical.ly are with us no more. Vine was initially popular but withered away after being bought by Twitter. It was discontinued in 2017. Meanwhile, ByteDance bought Musical.ly in 2017. They folded Musical.ly into Tiktok this summer following a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission. Musicial.ly, with their very young demographic, had been illegally collecting personally information on children. They settled for $5.7 million - a record penalty.
Social media platforms hold a lot of power, so when they cross ethical and legal lines the stakes can be high. Just this week, headlines speculate that Tiktok (remember, a Beijing-based company) may be censoring protest related content in Hong Kong. It will be important to watch how Tiktok toes these lines, especially since their young audience is not directly choosing the content they consume but being guided by the invisible hand of an algorithm.
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