TikTok might well be the first Gen Z-propelled social media app to gain widespread global adoption. Here's what's making us stop and take notice of this short-form social video platform.
"Gen Z juggles multiple devices, multiple platforms, social media, instant messaging, video games and live-streaming all at the same time. We see their social media habits and purchasing behaviours influencing Millennials and Generation X too, and even the younger generations following them. They are the most influential but elusive consumers in history." Josh Rathour, CEO UNiDAYS
Gen Z is TikTok, a social media app that allows its users to post 15-second video skits of themselves lip-synching and dancing hilariously to karaoke tracks, dressing in weird costumes and otherwise having really, really awkward interactions (called “duets” in TikTok parlance) with their fellow TikTokers.
When China’s Bytedance, currently ranked as the world’s largest most-valuable internet startup (out-valuing Uber by three billion dollars), decided to merge a social app named Douyin with musical.ly, the Gen Z-favorite karaoke app, it created a massive overnight sensation. TikTok’s active monthly users now number roughly 500 million — and from all around the world.
TikTok offers a user experience that's visual and straight-to-the-point. It appeals to Gen Zers’ eight-second attention spans as well as to their overwhelming preference for visually-oriented social media platforms.
It’s truly global in its scope, a melting pot for musical audiences as various as hip-hop heads, Bollywood teenyboppers, Euro technophiles, indie rockers, country purists and K-Pop fanatics. (And in the process, it has the power to create mind-bendingly funny cultural "mash-ups” between these sub-genres.)
To be sure, TikTok’s become a vehicle for teen and college influencers to make a digital name for themselves (newsflash: the vast majority of memes and quick-snack content circulating through the internet nowadays was created by teenagers.) That being said, part of TikTok’s appeal is its sheer, clown-car-crash goofiness. TikTok encourages absurdity, and it doesn’t appear to take itself as seriously as other apps that are popular with Gen Z do.
TikTok might well be the latest globally heralded social media app to make a major splash with Gen Z, but will its influence last? Will it dominate social discourse in the same way Facebook did this past decade — or will it take the MySpace route and spontaneously combust into a dim ball of sunset? That remains to be seen.