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

