TikTok: Rewriting the World through Gen Z

By: Ira Sharma

You’ve no doubt heard of TikTok, the viral video app with almost 800 million users worldwide. The video app has started careers, ended them, and now is inching closer to being possibly banned in the U.S.

TikTok’s Rise To Fame

TikTok started as a merger between two incredibly popular apps- Musical.ly and Douyin. Both were apps where users could create and view short videos. These videos ranged from dancing to lip-syncing to humor. Soon, Douyin would buy Musical.ly and create the app now known as TikTok to the western world. (It is still Douyin in China). The parent company of Douyin, ByteDance, created a clever marketing campaign, advertising TikTok all over Snapchat and YouTube, apps frequented by teens. By the time 2019 rolled around, it was the 4th most popular download on Apple iPhones. It is now available in 154 countries and has 39 languages as options. 

What makes it so addicting? 

TikTok, as you may already know, is highly dependent on algorithms to tailor your For You page to exactly what you want to see. A quote from the New Yorker puts it perfectly: “TikTok orders you dinner by watching you look at food.” Alongside that, the length of the videos often holds viewers' attention for longer, letting you scroll for hours on the app without losing interest. 
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Music and TikTok

TikTok’s most popular videos tend to be dance videos or just videos set to music. Many songs have gone viral off the app, giving lesser-known creators access to fame, popularity, and even real record deals in real life. Songs like Panini by Lil Nas X, Lalala by Y2k, and bbno$, as well as older songs like Obsessed by Mariah Carey are just a few of the songs that have gone viral on the app.

Controversy

Most recently, the viral app has been banned twice in India. The most recent ban, along with many other Chinese apps, was after a border dispute where 20 Indian soldiers died. The app. There have been many concerns raised over the app with data collection all over the world. The Wall Street Journal writes: “U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has indicated the Trump administration is considering limiting U.S. users’ access to the popular video-messaging app TikTok. The Chinese-owned company has faced scrutiny in Washington as concerns grow that Beijing could tap the social-media platform’s information to gather data on Americans.” In Australia, similar concerns have been raised, with the Guardian reporting: “Liberal senator Jim Molan made the comments to Guardian Australia after Nationals MP George Christensen accused TikTok of being “used and abused” by the Chinese Communist party and called for it to be banned.”


Regardless of its controversies, TikTok remains ever popular among Gen Z. The future of the app is yet to be determined, but it will definitely be remarkable. ​