Sometimes, when I'm deep into scrolling on my phone, I tilt my head and realize I'm not even sure what app I'm using. A video takes up my entire screen. If I slide my finger down, another one appears. The feeling was disorienting, so I looked for small design cues around the edges of the screen. The thing I was staring at could have been TikTok, or it could have been one of those other social apps that looked exactly like it.
While it's not the first app to offer a constant stream of information, nor the first to use algorithms to better understand and target users, TikTok combines these ingredients like never before. It aggregates what every app wants: lots of time that many users spend scrolling, scrolling, scrolling (ideally past ads and products they will purchase). In recent years, every other major social platform — Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, X, even LinkedIn — has copied TikTok’s format. The app may be banned in the United States, but we're still living in a TikTok world.
I recently made a game that counted how many swipes it would take for each of my apps to lead me to a bottomless video feed. On the YouTube app's default screen, I swiped just once to view a long (five-minute) video, and then it presented me with a split-screen of four "short clips," the first of which attempted to use a few seconds The cycle of clocks seduces me, the silent lens. Clicking on any of these leads me to the application's vertical video pipeline. I almost immediately see a series of "Reels" when I open Facebook, and it only takes one or two swipes to click on similar "Videos for you" on LinkedIn. Both apps also have dedicated video tabs; the same goes for Snapchat and Instagram. X avoids the carousel, but clicking on any video leads to an entry point common to all these platforms: the wormhole. The app expands to full screen mode, giving me infinite scrolling of the video.
The new social media brought about by TikTok is no longer about your actual social circle. Platforms like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram are built on connecting with people you've met before; using them now feels increasingly like scrolling through channels or peering into a million glass houses. In 2022, Kate Lindsay is atlantic monthly This is an age of "performance" media, "where we create online primarily to reach the people we want." No People we know rather than people we know. "
Not everyone likes this transition. In the summer of 2022, hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition declaring that "We the People" wanted a return to the "dawn" of Instagram, when timelines were chronological and algorithms favored photos. Kendall Jenner and Kim Kardashian each shared a simple graphic read "Make INSTAGRAM AGAIN INSTAGRAM (Stop trying to be a TikToker, I just want to see cute photos of my friends.)Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, responded: “If you see a new full-screen version of your feed, or you hear about it, please know that this is a test,” he said. The Instagram video stream apparently came through. Photos, which he calls part of Instagram's "legacy," still exist on the app, but they are being drowned out by vertical videos. During a conference call with investors last year, Mark Zuckerberg said these videos accounted for half of the time people spent on Instagram.
Why this special feature where new videos appear with just a flick of your finger? “Every designer knows that app retention, user engagement, is directly related to how quickly the next app loads,” Aza Raskin reportedly told me in 2006 Infinite scroll was invented, now talks about the dangers of social media. In other words, when apps feed you more content quickly, it's harder to get rid of them. The design taps into the human desire for visual cues of task completion—like an empty plate, or the bottom of a page—and draws us in because it never delivers. "It hit me below the belt," Raskin said.
Unpredictable, instant rewards from posts you like will encourage you to search more. Research shows that combining short videos with rapid context switches interferes with our ability to act on our previous intentions. We even have a hard time remembering them. Researchers at Baylor University in Texas found that TikTok is particularly good at putting users into a flow state, where they are so absorbed that "nothing else seems to matter to them." True happiness drives this feeling. People say they have more fun on TikTok than on Instagram, and experience more serendipity than on Shorts or Reels: Researchers find the app weakens our self-control, while competitors don't .
Some users are so obsessed with TikTok that they appear to welcome a potential ban: "I'm addicted to this app. Nothing can stop me. They need to take it away," one person posted recently. "I might actually get my life back," said another. "I spend an average of 14 to 15 hours a day... It's not just screen time; it's constant doomscrolling." Likewise: "Yes, phone detox." Last year, fast company Published an article titled “I’m Addicted to TikTok.” I beg the government to ban it. A recent poll found that 44% of U.S. adults support banning TikTok, but only 34% believe the app poses a threat to national security; perhaps others just want to be freed of their own.
TikTok’s secret sauce is its famous — even miraculous — smart algorithm, which no imitator has been able to fully replicate. Much of the app's success may also come from the less professional, more unhinged culture its users foster: I'm just more likely to stumble upon someone's take on how a pre-teen Justin Bieber plays nice guy Glinda Characters doing witch impersonations, or covering their heads with nair, matter more than I've seen anywhere else. If the app works properly, I'm going to have to find another way to check on a 20-something year old who's been learning to play the same song on the trumpet since Christmas. She's terrible, but she's getting better.
TikTok’s ultimate legacy is convincing other major social media apps that people are not interested in seeing only people they know. We also appreciate videos, which are like little windows that allow us a brief glimpse into the lives of strangers. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said this aspect of TikTok makes it “uniquely fungible” — any app can show you a group of strangers. However, these strangers need to like the app enough to use it.
Researchers have pointed out that the motion we make by scrolling through videos is somewhat similar to pulling the lever on a slot machine. Such rhetoric can contribute to loose language surrounding social media addiction, confusing unhealthy use with real, debilitating cravings. But it seems likely that, if TikTok is ultimately banned, those who have already developed the urge to scroll will continue to pull the lever in search of a dopamine rush, or a video that you actually send to a friend. Without TikTok, we might make less money.