Tik Tok Takeover

Amanda Toland, Student Writer

Tik Tok is a video sharing network where creators can post 30-60 second clips of them doing lip-syncing or performing skits, with the intention to inspire creativity and bring joy. Tik Tok is owned by the company ByteDance which is based in Beijing and was originally launched in the U.S. in 2014 as Musical.ly. ByteDance bought Musical.ly for one billion dollars in 2017, and in 2018, they merged it with Tik Tok. It was the most downloaded app in 2018 and as of today, it has over 1.5 billion downloads and 500 million global users; 150 million of which are from China.

Former Pennridge High School student Gianna Szpanka has 427 thousand followers and gained popularity from her figure skating Tik Toks. Szpanka said that she never expected to become famous on the app and was not even planning on posting anything. Regarding her video going viral Szpanka said “I was really surprised, and I thought it was going to be one of those one-and-done types of videos. It still gets ridiculous attention to this day.” 

Dani Jones, a friend of extremely popular Tik Tok creator Charli D’amelio, has also gained popularity on the app. Dani, who has 138 thousand followers, met D’amelio when she had around only 400 thousand followers. At the time of writing this article, D’amelio had a whopping 31.8 million followers and 1.7 billion likes on her Tik Toks. When Jones was asked about the success of herself and D’amelio, Jones said, “I never expected [D’amelio] to be as huge as she is now. Especially someone from Connecticut.  Literally nothing happens here.”

Tik Tok has become extremely popular because of the variety of content on the app. One very popular category of content is comedy. Many people, including Szpanka, downloaded the app because their friends encouraged them to use it or because they felt they were missing out on popular content. Tik Tok is still being downloaded at an astounding rate with over 104 million downloads in the last month. 

The success of Szpanka, Jones, and D’amelio shows that everyday people can gain a following from social media. Short videos allow consumers to watch more content in less time and help creators grow their audience. This is also why the app is so addicting. Upon opening the app there is a page called the “For You Page.” This page has a seemingly endless amount of content as users can keep scrolling through video after video. This infinite amount of content ensures that users will never run out of things to view. Tik Tok users agree that this app is addicting.  When Szpanka was asked if the app was addicting she said, “Absolutely. I spend way too much time on the app.” Jones agreed and said, “Yes, 100 percent. I go on the app before I go to sleep and get sucked in. Then when I check the time, it is 2:00 a.m.” Tik Tok is getting more popular every single day and it is not expected to slow down anytime soon.