The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
10 — Wednesday, December 2, 2020
statement
W
hat is the first image that
comes to your mind when you
think of TikTok? Is it Charli
D’Amelio and her friends dancing to a viral
song? Or is it half-naked white boys jamming
to hip hop music? While these may be the
most common associations of TikTok, the
platform has many more sides to it than just
the content of attractive young people doing
silly dances and pranks. Many young TikTok
users were responsible for tanking a Trump
rally in Tulsa in June by reserving tickets and
not showing up for the event, something they
organized through the app. In September, a
TikTok creator collective, Tok the Vote, was
founded to promote voter registration in the
2020 election.
Over the past two years, TikTok has ex-
panded its influence in the United States and
has become a crucial information outlet for
Generation Z as well as a major platform for
young activists to share their ideas and to ex-
pose injustices. This has even occurred here
at the University of Michigan. In early Sep-
tember, LSA junior Sam Burnstein depicted
the poor conditions of University quarantine
housing in a TikTok. Another student ex-
pressed through a TikTok her frustrations
with the administration’s poor COVID-19
precautions and the then-ongoing strikes
within the University. Both of their videos
quickly went viral and drew the attention
of several major media outlets. TikTok has
proved itself as much more than merely an
entertainment app, but rather a platform
where young people can make their voices
easily heard by tens of thousands or even
millions of people.
So, what is TikTok’s magic? In August,
Instagram, now owned by Facebook, Inc., in-
troduced a new feature called Reels, which
allows users to shoot and edit short video
clips that are nearly identical to the experi-
ence of TikTok. Snapchat has also recently
presented its own take on short-form vid-
eos, Spotlight. While Reels has already been
dubbed as a copycat of TikTok, it is also un-
likely that Snapchat’s version of it will be
able to replicate TikTok’s mainstream suc-
cess.
The secret to TikTok’s success is rather
simple: the algorithm. By relying on a very
complex set of indicators, TikTok’s algo-
rithm lands people into communities of very
specific interests, which often leads the us-
ers to have some form of self-discovery or
growth while they descend deeper into the
app’s rabbit hole. Gen Z lesbians have found
love through bonding on Alt TikTok and
WitchTok. A YouTube influencer known as
“bestdressed” admitted in a video that she
had a revelation about her sexuality after the
algorithm immediately placed her in “bi girl
TikTok.” Public health experts also use the
app to bring awareness to COVID-19 precau-
tions, and teachers join the platform to give
tips to students experiencing trouble with
virtual education. The algorithm has made
it possible for both mainstream and niche
communities to exist simultaneously by al-
most exclusively sending catered content to
the user’s “For You” page.
Indeed, with the existence of such a di-
verse array of users and communities, Tik-
Tok has transformed itself into a combina-
tion of a “how-to” guide database, Vine 2.0,
a condensed version of Khan Academy and a
dating app for Gen Z. Recently, TikTok also
announced that it is in the process of test-
ing a new “Learn” tab on the app to show-
case educational and instructional content.
It is clear that TikTok is no longer that app
where creators post only funny videos and
viral dances, but rather, it is an online space
where people connect through monthly
trends and sometimes share meaningful con-
versations about sociopolitical issues.
***
LSA freshman Alan Yang went viral on
TikTok during the summer. During our
phone conversation, he said that he uses Tik-
Tok for about two to three hours a day, but
he confessed that over the summer, during
lockdown in California, he spent almost six
hours on TikTok every single day. Through
his one viral TikTok, Yang has gained more
than 2,000 followers already, most of whom
he does not know but took an interest in his
daily life. He deeply appreciated the im-
mense power of TikTok to create a safe and
close-knit community, especially during
such an isolating time.
“When I am meeting someone new for the
first time, just talking about TikTok is such
a great bonding point,” Yang explained. “It
is definitely a safe space where I am able to
connect with my followers and community.
It’s something that I really love and cherish,
(a space) where I can just be myself.”
In addition to a fun community, Yang also
sees TikTok as a learning platform. The vid-
eos that pop up on his FYP range from gen-
eral fashion tips to class recommendations at
the University. Yang also recalled a trend in
recent months targeted toward high school
students, where creators make college in-
troduction videos in a specific format about
dorms, food, classes and so on.
“If I were a high schooler, I would have
found (the videos) super useful,” Yang stat-
ed. “Since there is no campus tour because of
COVID, TikTok becomes this learning plat-
form (for students applying to college).”
Yang was not the only one who benefited
from TikTok’s variety of content. LSA junior
and pre-med student Emery Hakim down-
loaded the app this past summer to watch
food and dance videos in her spare time, but
the algorithm eventually led her to science
and pre-med related videos. Through this
scrolling, she found and signed up for a vir-
tual shadowing program where she learned
how to do case work usually done in medical
school.
“I joined (TikTok) because it was some-
thing that everyone had and it was just kind
of a stupid thing to kill time,” Hakim ex-
plained. “But then I ended up finding really
useful information about med school, the
MCAT and volunteer opportunities.”
Being on TikTok also reaffirmed Hakim’s
passions for medicine as a career. She discov-
ered the account Institute of Human Anato-
my during quarantine, which she found both
informational and fascinating. She said she
finds it comforting to know that she will be
able to learn something interesting in medi-
cal school rather than being stuck in physics
and organic chemistry classes.
“Being pre-med at Michigan is really dif-
ficult, and a lot of (what I learn) does not ap-
ply to what medical school is actually like,”
Hakim stated. “Learning more about what
doctors actually do on a day-to-day basis is
really exciting for me.”
As practical tips and knowledge thrive
on the platform, many have begun using
TikTok as a professional platform to pro-
mote their own businesses and services.
The hashtag “#tips” has 19.3 billion views
on TikTok whereas “#resume” has 126.2
million views. Professionals from all fields,
including business, medicine, restaurant
and tech, have all joined the platform to
share their insights through 30-second
videos.
“#Cooking” has more than 25 billion
views on TikTok, and LSA sophomore Kyle
Nash was one of the many people who ben-
efited from this source. During quarantine,
Nash found himself clueless about how to
make food for himself and his roommate.
Though he never considered a TikTok a
traditional platform to get beginner reci-
pes and cooking tips, he came across a few
videos which he found very useful. It has
been a valuable journey for Nash, since he
has gone from not knowing how to cook at
all to being able to experiment with differ-
ent dishes.
“With YouTube and other platforms, I
would kind of have to look for (the videos),
whereas TikTok just showed it to me and it
wasn’t something I had to go out of my way
to find,” Nash explained. “The fact that (Tik-
Tok) is so tailored to each individual person
makes it a really great outlet for informa-
tion.”
Unlike others I spoke with, Nash only
spends about 15 minutes on TikTok every
day, and was shocked to learn that many are
so addicted to the app. Indeed, users spend
an average of 46 minutes a day on TikTok
and open the app eight times a day. The con-
tent on TikTok is always rapidly changing,
with new trends being created almost week-
ly. Furthermore, the concise nature of the
medium also facilitates the instant absorp-
tion of information.
Julie Albright, a sociologist from the Uni-
versity of Southern California, compared the
consumption of these short-form videos to
“drugging ourselves.” According to Albright,
the active usage of these addictive platforms
changes how our brains perceive time and
thus drastically reduces our attention spans.
Nevertheless, while most of our generation
acknowledges such harmful effects, there
seems to be no intention or effort to ulti-
mately get off the app.
“I think (our shortening attention span) is
awful. I am a part of it and TikTok definitely
reinforces it,” Hakim said with a light chuck-
le. “It will definitely hurt our generation that
we can’t pay attention to things for more
than 20 seconds. But it’s okay … for now!”
***
Political expressions on TikTok are quite
diverse. On one hand, you have Marxist col-
lege students with their trendy turtlenecks
who make videos debunking the mud pie
theory and celebrating Angela Davis; on
the other hand, there are also many young
people who unapologetically show off the
Trump 2020 flag in their room.
TikTok was also a major platform used at
the height of Black Lives Matter protests this
past summer. Under the hashtag “#black-
livesmatter,” which has exceeded 20 billion
views, Black creators explain systemic rac-
ism while many also share tips on how to
protest safely. However, it is also populated
with irrelevant videos that are obviously ex-
ploiting the hashtag for its popularity.
Engineering sophomore Rachel Pastori
expressed her appreciation for political
TikTok. According to Pastori, creators of-
ten took their differences and conversations
outside of TikTok to YouTube or Twitch in
the format of debate. Streamed six months
ago, Harry Sission and Ashleigh Mae repre-
senting the liberals and Treyton Shriver and
Kaden Duff representing the conservatives
took part in a debate. All of these creators
are young: Treyton is just 14 years old, while
Harry is 18.
Pastori explained that she felt a sense
of empowerment listening to these young
people speak, rather than reading articles
by adults who are much older than she is.
Though she does not identify as a Republi-
can, she finds it enlightening that TikTok is a
platform that is inclusive of diverse political
views.
“Sometimes, I go on TikTok after news
comes out; I just wanna see other people’s
points of views,” Pastori explained. “It’s re-
ally nice to see other people my age or older
than me posting about the election or gen-
eral U.S. politics.”
In addition to watching young creators
sharing their political opinions and activism,
Pastori also enjoyed the range of new ideas
she is exposed to on TikTok. She told me that
she saw a lot of videos about Native Ameri-
can and indigenous cultures on her FYP,
which she found very interesting because
she never had the opportunity to learn about
them in school. Though she was raised Cath-
olic, Pastori is not a devout, and rather found
a pastor on TikTok who opened her eyes to
a new and more liberal form of Christianity.
“A video would always come up on my
FYP and I can learn something new,” Pas-
tori said. “On Instagram or Twitter, you can
only really see stuff from people who you are
following. TikTok makes (the information)
more accessible and you are able to reach
more people through the algorithm.”
Indeed, while many creators post under
political hashtags to make a joke out of the
situation or express their opinions through
a trend, there are also ones who are dedi-
cated to sharing genuinely helpful informa-
tion. Yang told me that he found updates
about the Graduate Employees’ Organiza-
tion strike in September almost exclusively
through videos by creator chemcowboi, who
gave daily updates about the then ongoing
movement. In addition to updates about the
GEO strike, they also share insightful advice
about chemistry and graduate school.
Nevertheless, both Yang and Pastori
agreed that there is a need to take the in-
formation found on TikTok with a grain of
salt. Since the algorithm can make anyone
go viral, it facilitates the spread of informa-
tion, whether that information is true or
false. Pastori clarified that a lot of creators
use a picture of the source in the background
of the video, and she also goes through the
comments to see if others make objections
to the creators’ points. Though she also does
her own fact-checking on some of these top-
ics, Pastori admits that she does not have
time to always research.
“If I am suspicious about something
that they brought up, I would go and check
the validity of their sources,” Pastori said.
“Sometimes their sources are slightly biased
towards one side or outdated.”
***
In the age of information, it seems that
every single new app that enters the market
is trying to compete for our time and atten-
tion. Over time, as our brains become used
to the sheer abundance of information that
we absorb every day, we jump at the sight of
a notification and the first thing we do when
we wake up is grab our phones and check
our socials.
Many social media platforms are trying to
diversify and rebrand themselves as “more
than just a form of entertainment” — Twit-
ter is the app where journalists receive the
most engagements, whereas Instagram has
become known for its colorful, educational
infographics. And as for TikTok — well, you
just read about it.
Information is certainly not a bad thing.
But learning about anti-racism by scroll-
ing through an app is vastly different from
learning about the topic by reading a book
or a journalistic article. While creators are
able to offer raw experiences or opinions on
a certain issue, there are many nuances that a
60-second video (with no ingrained citation,
by the way) fails to capture. No matter how
much the app attempts to rebrand itself, it is
simply insufficient as a learning platform.
However, TikTok can still be a valuable
source for information. Though I do think
that it is helpful to mention that if we are
truly intrigued by a certain topic, learning
shouldn’t stop at TikTok. Therefore, a con-
versation or a book can be empowering; in-
stead of mindlessly scrolling and absorbing,
we have the agency to discern, disagree and
contend.
Social media broadens our perspectives
about the world, but it also narrows it. We
only click on what we want to see and the al-
gorithm picks up the cues, so it sends to the
FYP mostly what we are interested in and
creators who share similar opinions as us.
But learning isn’t about reaffirming our own
values and seeing what we already know, it’s
about breaking boundaries and stepping out
of our comfort zone. While social media can-
not do that for us, real life interactions do.
Down the Tik-
Tok rabbit hole
BY LOLA YANG, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT