A social media app created by the founders of Vine and is often referred to as a “video for life”.
How did this platform garner all major interests?
On TikTok, videos are accompanied by short bursts of sound, but many posts have no sound at all.
TikTok was founded in 2016 and is now in 150 countries with over 500 million followers.
Samsung purchased the company in 2018 and was sold to ByteDance for a reported $1 Billion.
TikTok’s founders were co-partners in Vine, which was bought by Twitter in 2012.
They used TikTok to parody popular songs of the time such as “I’ma let you finish” by Kendrick Lamar and “Panda” by Desiigner.
How did this app started at first?
The app started out as a way for teenagers to share videos of themselves performing simple stunts such as dancing or jumping on trampolines with their friends, however this quickly developed into a much more professional platform for celebrity endorsements.
In early 2017, the app became popular in the United States.
Many celebrities have their own TikTok account such as Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes.
According to a Pew Research Center study on Internet and American Life Journal from 2018, one in three people between ages 14 to 17 use the app, followed by one in four U.S. adults 18-29 years old.
In 2017, it was reported that TikTok had more users than Twitter (which is 223 million) although these reports are unverified and many of its users are underaged teenagers who do not use Twitter due to age restrictions on the social media platform.
The app is estimated to have over 500 million users worldwide and has been downloaded more than 1 billion times.
In 2018, the American Psychological Association reported that a study had found that “adolescent girls who use social media are more likely to report symptoms of depression and poor body image.” The study also found that “there was no evidence linking boys’ social media use with their mental health.”
Although Tik Tok is a largely popular app, there have been multiple cases where it has been used as a tool for covert exploitation and sexual abuse. In March 2019, there was an allegation of child pornography being shared on the app itself by Canadian teenager M.K. This evidence was being circulated on various groups and individual user accounts.
This brand and app was endorsed by major people
Rolling Stone reported that the first documented recording of “Tik Tok” as a song was done by a group called “Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz” in 2004, who recorded a version of the song for their album “We Are Young Money”.
In May 2017, an unofficial remix of the song was released by Canadian producer T-Series, who also owns the rights to use the original copyright.
A study done in 2018 showed that those using TikTok on their smartphones were 2.5 times more likely than non-users to take drugs.
In 2019, TikTok was banned in China for copyright violations as well as being a “threat to public security”.
The app has come under fire for allowing explicit and inappropriate content to spread through its platform.
TikTok is known to be very popular amongst young users of social media but a study done by the University of Texas’s McCombs school of Business showed that over 70% of users were over the age 18.
There are many music videos on TikTok with millions of views, such as an early hit called “Cooking By the Book” which is a parody off of Cardi B’s song Bartier Cardi. This video has almost 50 million views. “Cooking By The Book” is the second most viewed video on TikTok after Desiigner’s “Panda” video.
An artist by the name of Jammz has a song called “Tik Tok” which has around 18 million views alone.
There are many music videos on TikTok where users of the app dance or perform acrobatics for a big crowd. These videos typically reach 200,000,000 views or more. A majority of these videos were created by female artists or groups who have millions of followers on TikTok as well as being famous in their own right. Some examples are:
Users can consume and share content on TikTok from various genres such as music, fashion, and fitness. However, other users have been known to share violent videos and even threats.
Fighting through the odds
The app has also been intertwined with the #MeToo movement by a group called “TikTok Harassment Network” which was created in April 2019. This group came together after seeing so many videos of women verbally attacked.
Since there is no actual number of followers for TikTok accounts, it is difficult to ascertain how many users were affected by the sexual harassment on the app.