Musical.ly was first launched in August 2014. It was developed for the users of their platform to be able to create, lip-sync, and dance to short videos. According to the company, ByteDance closed Musical.ly in November of 2017, and later emerged with another of its products, TikTok, in August of 2018. Musical.ly had over 90 million total users and more than 10 million users daily. 

TikTok, “A popular social media app that allows users to create, watch, and share 15-second videos shot on mobile devices or webcams,” (D’Souza, 2022), became more popular in 2020 when a big TikTok creator/dancer surfaced on the platform. Charli D’Amelio was a competitive dancer for over 10 years before starting her social media career on Tiktok. Many girls look up to her because she is original and talks about real things going on in everyday life. Now, in 2022, Charli and her family have created a podcast (2 CHIX), a tv show (D’Amelio’s On Hulu), and a fragrance (Born Dreamer By CD). Other Users started using the TikTok app once they realized that it was fun to watch and fun to make them too. TikTok is now being used in over 150 countries and has been downloaded over 200 million times in the United States. 

I, Katie Meares, sent out a survey and received many responses from our students here at Southeast of Saline regarding their use of TikTok. From the responses I recorded, the students believe that they would spend an average of 1 to 2 hours on Tik Tok before seeing their actual screen time average according to their phone’s analytics. After they had checked their settings, the student’s responses ranged from 30 minutes to 6 hours for their daily average. The student’s weekly average ranged from 2 hours to 14 hours. A question I had asked was, “What is your total screen time per day and per week?” meaning just on their phone, and the responses I recorded averaged from 1 hour to 9 hours per day and 6 hours to 14 hours per week. 

On TikTok, there are “sides” or different categories that are created through the app using an algorithm. A side of TikTok is based on your interests and your hobbies that match with specific videos. I asked the secondary students, “What side of TikTok are you on?” and I got all kinds of different responses. Students replied with Comedy, Memes, Story Telling, Gossip, Animals, Homecoming, and Fantasy Football. Students also replied with what kinds of videos that they like seeing: Comedy, Drama, Current Issues, Babies, and Christmas coming up.

Another question I had asked the secondary students was, “What are some Pros and Cons of having Titkok as an app?” Here are some of their responses:

Pros: 

• Entertainment
• Learning New Things
• Relaxing and Passes Time
• Informative
• Watching and Learning Dances

Cons:

• Addicting
• Wastes Time
• Distracting and Screen Binging
• Easy Habit
• Procrastination

Work Cited

D’Souza, Deborah. “TikTok: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Popular.” Investopedia, 5 July 2022, https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-tiktok-4588933. Accessed 17 October 2022.