One social media platform I personally use more often than not is Tik Tok. It is my favourite social app to use out of all the media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook… I’m sure you can imagine the main ones.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13358261/tiktok.png)
I feel like Tik Tok is the one app where most people can feel like themselves without feeling a sense of judgement, or even some sort of expectation to look or expose yourself a certain way.
Tik Tok is basically an app that allows people to do an array of fun things, such as learning a trendy dance and recording themselves to the song either individually or with friends/ family, uploading videos of their daily activities (one popular trend right now involves people posting each day in lockdown and what they do to keep motivated and happy during this time), upload cooking videos. These are just a glimpse of the type of stuff that is shared within the app.
With this social platform, I strongly feel that I can have fun and post videos of me without giving a second thought on what others may think of me, I couldn’t care less in fact.
Unlike Instagram where it is almost as if there is an underlying pressure to look a certain way. The number of influencers on there make people, particularly around my age feel like we need to mimic their photos, to dress a certain, to be a certain skinny, to do our make up a certain way. Basically, it is stripping away from people’s actual personality and real view on the world and how they want others to view them. Because if they don’t do this, there is a fear people make be left judging why you are so different to the rest.
This ultimately, is the reason why Tik Tok is so much better and has created an environment for people to feel a sense of self and share their free spirit, instead of forming this façade of yourself.
Tik Tok invites a wide audience to join in, I have seen people ranging from little kids to matured adults enjoying themselves on the platform. However, I would have to say that is most popular with people around my age (teenagers/ young adults). It makes one big community. People even use Tik Tok to their advantage by sharing facts or promoting products for their job. I have seen dentists upload videos on facts about maintaining heathy dental health. I would say that it is more intended for a domestic audience as I tend to get videos of things happening within my area or Australia on my for you page. However, I also get videos from overseas such as videos from people like Jojo Siwa or stuff that happening in various countries. You can’t choose what you see on your foryoupage so it depends on each time you scroll down the page what you see.
Academic Sources:
Paper+Spark (2020), ‘TikTok and The Power of Individuality and Creativity’, viewed August 17th 2021, https://paperandspark.com.au/understanding_tiktok/
No author (2021), ‘The Guardian’, Instagram is supposed to be friendly, Instagram is supposed to be friendly. So why is it making people so miserable?, viewed August 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/17/instagram-is-supposed-to-be-friendly-so-why-is-it-making-people-so-miserable
allegraslovitt.com 