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“Reasons for Enormous Popularity of TikTok”

January 29, 2021

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TITLE

The tile for the paper is “Reasons for Enormous Popularity of TikTok”

INTRODUCTION

With the surge of development in technology, especially easy availability of smart

phones and internet services, the short video industry has also grown organically across the

world. There are limited studies that are done on customer – centric video making applications

like TikTok. The video application made its entry in 2018 and even since it has added hundreds

of millions of users, especially the young teenagers and young population up to the age of 25

years. The growing popularity has also attracted the celebrities from all walks of life to adopt and

stream their videos on TikTok. This paper attempts to look in the various reasons that made this

application immensely successful across the world.

The growing popularity of TikTok is the result of increase in the trend for short duration

video. The youth and teenagers are attracted due to the content and the appeal that suits their

generation. TikTok provided them the right kind of platform to express themselves and express

their true self, which was either restricted or denied in other social media platforms. The

platform was not only a platform for continuous entertainment but also a medium of self-

expression and exploring the group identity as well. However, there were some of the major

concerns like privacy issue, quality of the content and inclusion of some material that is

inappropriate for all generations and age groups, let alone teenagers and adolescent.

TikTok got popularity and acceptability pretty soon and it literally multiplied its

registered users across the world. The markets, media houses and other celebrities were quick to
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adopt the platform so that they can reach millions of youngsters, who are easy to influence than

the grown adults. Many people and organizations have also tried to leverage the platform for

some good uses and educational purposes; however, they did not get much success as audience

and users are more interested in entertaining and engaging content.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The growing influence of Tik Tok is studied and researched by many scholars through

their work and have published articles on the same. In their paper, Jaffar, Riaz and Mushtaq

(2019) have discussed the rapid increase of use if Tik Tok, especially by the teenagers to

entertain themselves and getting hooked. The paper explores the reasons of the rapid popularity

of the application and examines the positive as well as negative impact of Tik Tok on teenagers.

The paper also looks in to some of the teenagers who have become rave among youth and have

gained celebrity status and have millions of followers as well.

In a separate paper by Christopher and Swathi (2020), they study the impact of TikTok

on the academics and psychology of the students in India as the application has become a rage in

the country with more than 120 million users. Their paper explores the impact of TikTok on the

academics and the quality of study time that is spent by the youngsters and teenagers and their

findings are not encouraging and suggests towards TikTok as distraction among the youth

pursuing studies and academics.

Xu and Zhang (2019) discuss about the rise of the short video as genre and how the

growing interest for short video has helped TikTok gain popularity. Their paper finds that the

right mixture of marketing strategy, algorithm and ability to meet the user’s expectations has
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made TikTok popular. Basically, this paper tries to find evolution of TikTok from the business

perspective.

While TikTok has gained immense popularity, it has also faced severe and harsh criticism

with respect to the content and vulgarity that it caters due to its proximity to the user - centric

approach. This aspect has been highlighted by Xiao Yu (2019) in his paper. According to the

author, the platform deviates from the standard ethical norms of society and serves the content

that is vulgar and not appropriate to watch in the mainstream society. Being user – centric, the

groups and the users of TikTok are self-conforming and create content that reflect their poor

mentality and shallow knowledge.

Likewise, the paper by Zuo and Wang (2019) also analyzes the behavior of the TikTok

user from the cultural point of view and how it has given rise to the popularism where many

individuals have found a new voice and identity for themselves. The papers explore that users

have the strong desire to have a platform that can help express themselves in what ever way they

want, in pursuit of entertainment, herd behavior and being part of the crowd that is product itself.

The author further asserts that the TikTok has been also helpful in identity construction of its

users in the form of self – identity, group – identity and cultural identity.

The social media platforms are not all bad and have some of the useful applications as

well. The paper by Zhu, et al. (2019) finds that some of the healthcare professionals in China are

leveraging the benefits of short video and using the same for engagement with residents and

communities for their healthcare programs. The professional healthcare is using the short videos

using even animations to create awareness about the health programs and inform people about

various diseases and medication. In this way, the TikTok is really useful and this model can be

used as best practice by others as well.

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A research paper by Dilon (2020) has concluded that the users are differently affected by

TikTok. The spectators or the audience of TikTok is likely to have more adverse effects than the

main users. The paper also explores the way in which it has increased the number of influencers

and how it has also given way to new entrepreneurial ventures and business ideas as well. As per

the author, there are both negative as well as positive aspects of the application and despite some

of its criticism and bad publicity, it is still liked by millions.

Another study by Feng, et al. (2019) was conducted and it was based on the various

literature reviews and interview of the experts. The objective of the study was to study the

application from three aspects of user experience, interaction and usability and finally

emotionality. The study also identified main factors responsible for the same and understanding

the weightage of each of the above mentioned three factors. The study established that the

emotional and interactive factor accounts for 80% while usability factor is 20%. The study like

these help in understanding the focus area for a application like TikTok that has mass appeal and

penetration among young and adolescent population.

The sudden rise of social media platforms like TikTok has brought some of the disruptive

changes and the television channels are also trying to have the slice of it in order to target and

reach the younger generation that is drifting away from traditional television. The study by

Vázquez-Herrero, et al. (2021) explores the presence of television channels and programs on

Tiktok. The study indicates that most of the television channel lack the basic traits like simple

tone, participation and various trends.

The behavior of short video creator platform like TikTok was studied by Zea and

Heekyoung (2019) and they presented their paper in conference held at University of Manchester

in September 2019. The study was about exploring the use of TikTok as learning and practice
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creative skills as it uses the visually engaging materials and graphics. The study finds that there

is a gap between the user behavior and the expectation in viewer attitude towards drawing skill

sharing videos.

RESEARCH QUESTION

This research attempts to find the answer of “why social media platform TikTok is so famous

across the world and in all generations?”

METHODOLOGY

The selected methodology would be to through survey questions. A survey would be

conducted on a population ranging from 30-40 participants. The participants covered would be

from all walks of like and in all age groups with special focus on young and teenage population

as TikTok is more famous and appealing to them. The questionnaire will have both closed ended

as well as open ended questions. There will be 13 closed – ended or objective type questions

with options and there would be 2 open – ended questions where participants would be able to

express their thoughts in their own words. For open – ended questions, there is limit of 125

words. The collected data will be collected and processed in excel and other appropriate software

and would be analyzed and interpreted using the statistical methods.

Research methodology can be either quantitative or qualitative. There are various

methods through which the data can be collected. The most popular among them to do the

primary research are personal interviews and survey questions. In this research, the methodology
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of survey questions has been adopted. The survey questions help in accumulating the data which

can be used in many ways as the need of the research fits. There are various mathematical and

statistical methods which can be deployed to get the desired results like analytical tables,

establishing the relationships between various factors and variables through application of linear

equation or regression analysis. Then, the collected data can also be understood as meaningful

data through various charts and graphs as well.

There can be various types of surveys that are based on questionnaires like telephonic

surveys, postal surveys, email survey or through public domain where a website is used and

participants can participate to conduct the survey (for example – survey monkey). Further, the

questions can be either open – ended or closed – ended. Most of the questions in a questionnaire

survey are closed ended where participants are given multiple choices to give one or more

opinion from the options given. In open – ended questions, the participants are free to write

anything that they feel about the subject matter of the survey. The open – ended questions also

help in collecting the qualitative aspects of the research and are equally important as data backed

quantitative survey.

FINDINGS AND RESULTS

The survey was conducted through survey questions. A total of 15 questions were asked

in the survey of which 13 were closed ended questions and 2 were open ended questions. A total

of 25 respondents were approached, out of which 4 were disqualified as the forms filled by them

incomplete or having multiple errors. The findings and the results of the survey is based on the

data collected from 21 respondents. These comprise of people from all ages and all walks of life.
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The respondents were approached in the university and the adjoining areas through email

contact. A total of 50 emails were sent, out of which 30 responded and finally, 25 turned up. The

survey was conducted through Google Forms which was sent to the respondents, keeping in

mind the COVID – 19 restrictions to conduct the physical survey. It was taken care that the

identity and the data shared by the respondents is anonymous and a prior permission was also

sought from them to use the data for academic research paper.

Demographics

There were two questions pertaining to the demographics were gender and the age group

of the respondents were asked.

There were 62% male respondents and 38% female respondents. One third of the total

respondents were from the age bracket of 19-25 years and 38 percent from 13-18 years and rest

of 28 percent were from the higher age group of 25 years and above. Of the total respondents,

more than 70% were from the age groups that actually uses the TikTok most.

Usage of Tiktok

There are three questions in this section that explore the frequency and usage of the

TikTok. The following charts express the same as well.

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In the survey, it was found that most of the respondents spend 1-3 hours daily using

TikTok and approximately 24% use the same for more than 3 hours. The next question is also

related to the frequency of the using the TikTok in a week or on daily basis. 57% of the

respondents use TikTok on a daily basis 24% 4-8 times a week. The last question pertains to the

importance that TikTok holds in the lives of respondents. More than two-thirds or 66.7%

respondents believe that TikTok is an important part of their lives.

Motivation and Activity level

When asked about reasons of using the TikTok, most of the respondents believe that they

use it for interesting video content and using it as the platform that helps them express

themselves. The respondents were to answer 5 questions from strongly agree to strongly

disagree. The above mentioned two questions were answered most and saw the highest peak.
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The next question asks the respondents about the activities that they do on TikTok. The

top answer is obviously watching videos (100%), followed by searching the videos of interest

(76.2%) and ‘Like’ the video (61.9%). More than 50% respondents also post their own videos or

follow any TikTok influencers.

The next question was regarding the factor(s) that motivates the respondents for using

TikTok. Maximum number of respondents (90.5%) are motivated to watch the videos on TikTok

because they are very interesting. The second-best reason is that people feel happy watching the

short videos in TikTok. Many respondents (76.2%) also think that TikTok videos keep them

engaged.
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In response to the next question, 100% respondents believe that the application is very

easy to operate and 81% believe that there is content for everyone.

Perception about TikTok

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57.1% of the respondents said that they also upload the videos on TikTok. This shows

that they are heavily engaged with the application. 76% respondents agree that they recommend

this application to others as well. Lastly, in response to another question, 71.4% believe that

TikTok is better social media application than other popular social media platforms.

Open – Ended Questions

The first open – ended question was reading the nature of content that people watch on

TikTok. The top category was the dance videos, followed by songs and social media challenges.

Many people also preferred the voice over videos, hobby videos and many other types of videos.

There are many categories in TikTok and people watch them according to their preferences and

areas of interest.

The second question was regarding the views and thoughts of the respondents with

respect to TikTok. While many appreciate the application for it being fabulous, addictive and
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interesting, many also believe that there are safety concerns with the application, content is not

appropriate and it acts as distractor.

DISCUSSION ANALYSIS

Conserving the overall survey, the research can be categorized as Qualitative and

Quantitative. The quantitative aspect is the one that users numbered data and are supported by its

conversion in to meaningful information. Staring with the demographics of the respondents, most

of them are males but that was not something intentional. However, age-wise, the respondents

are well distributed and 70% of the participants are in the age group of 13 to 25 years, which is

also considered to be target group for TikTok. The research indicates that approximately 70% or

more users use TikTok for more than 1 hour a day. Majority of the respondents use the

application daily and this indicates the addictiveness for the application. More than 80%

respondents use the same for more than 4-8 times in a week to almost on a daily basis. Further,

two – thirds of the respondents believe that TikTok is an important part of their life. This

analysis indicates that the teenagers and youngsters have very strong likeability and consider it as

an important part of their lives.

The answer to the above question of enormous likeability lies in the next question where

the respondents were asked to answer fives question from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

TikTok is popular because people find interesting video content on this application and they find

this platform as medium of self – expression. The younger generation is normally dictated by

their elders about what to do and what not. Applications like TikTok has given them a chance to

showcase their talent and a medium where they can express themselves on various issues.
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Whether it is through dance, songs, voiceovers or social media challenges, they want visibility;

sometimes in their closed circle and sometimes in larger audience. While many do it for fun or

according to their interests and hobbies, some of them use the platform for monetizing it and

earn a handsome amount.

Moving ahead, the most common activities that people do on TikTok are watching videos

and searching the videos of interest. While the first one is obvious, the latter one shows that there

is everything to suit anybody’s interest. People find satisfaction when they watch videos of their

interest or follow their favorite TikTok stars. A large number of respondents post their own

videos as well. This is an important aspect as TikTok is a platform that gives lot of freedom to

the users to post their videos. This gives sense of self – gratification and achievement who post

their video and feel elated that they are being watched, followed and commented. TikTok has

disrupted the lives of youngsters and teenagers who do not have any identity or social status and

yet they can be seen again and again on screen and their acts is visible to millions. This brings to

another psychological aspect of watching the TikTok videos. The respondents expressed that

they watch the video because they are very interesting, it makes them very happy and it keeps

them engaged. While other social media platform is equally engaging, TikTok seems to have an

edge as it is easier to navigate and find content of own interest. TikTok gives a sense of

happiness and satisfaction to its users and that is also one of the many factors discussed above

that makes it so popular, especially among youngers up to the age of 25 years.

The users of TikTok are so much influenced by the application that most of the consider

it as superior social media application and they recommend it to everyone so that they can make

a community. one of the most interesting aspects of this survey was the results of the open –

ended questions which were around the nature of the content that people see on TikTok and their
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overall views on TikTok. The respondents in this survey were more attracted towards the dance,

music and social media challenges. The voiceover, trending hashtags and hobby videos are also

very popular among the user of TikTok.

CONCLUSION

The last couple of decades have seen tremendous increase in the usage and adaptability of

internet-based technology. The innovative technology, accessibility to cheaper internet services

and smart phones have made it possible for increasing use of application-based software. The

medium is used for many purposes and entertainment is also one of the them. The desire for self

– expression and increasing trend for short videos has created a new market for itself. Mobile

application like TikTok is one such application that has gained tremendous popularity and

adaptability across the world, especially among teenagers and young people up to the age of 25

years.

In order to find the answer of its immense popularity and adaptability, this research has

been conducted. The research is primarily based on the survey that it conducted through a

questionnaire. It contained closed ended as well as open ended question to understand the

reasons of its success. Apart from it, the secondary sources like various research paper on

TikTok and its success were also accessed and referred to. As per the findings of the research, it

has been found that users find the videos very interesting and they feel good while watching the

videos. The application is simple to use and do not restrict anyone to post their videos. One of

the key findings of the research was that people use it as platform that helps them express

themselves. This is a great aspect that help them pursue their hobbies and share it with millions
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of other like-minded people. The platform is used for making and finding friends and gives the

liberty to watch videos of their interests as well. Such features have made TikTok gain popularity

over other social media platforms. However, there are some concerns as well. This research as

well as some other papers suggests that the over usage and indulgence of youngsters have

distracted them from their academics and has also made them vulnerable when they are not

appreciated or received as they expect. There are privacy issues and content related matters as

well due to which many countries have also taken legal action against TikTok. Despite some of

the adversaries and short comings, TikTok is immensely popular among youth. This platform

should be used to leverage its popularity for other purposes like education, government

programs, spreading awareness and self-development as well.

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REFERENCES:

Dilon, C. (2020). Tiktok Influences on Teenagers and Young Adults Students: The Common

Usages of the Application Tiktok. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering,

Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 68(1), 132-142.

Feng, Y.-L., Chen, C.-c., & Wu, S.-M. (2019). Evaluation of Charm Factors of Short Video User

Experience using FAHP – A Case Study of Tik Tok APP. IOP Publishing.

Jaffar, B., Riaz, S., & Mushtaq, A. (2019). Living in a Moment: Impact of TicTok on Influencing

Younger Generation into Micro-Fame. Journal of Content, Community &

Communication, 10(5), 187-194.

Swathi, G., & Christopher, D. (2020). A STUDY TO ANALYSE THE IMPACT OF TIKTOK

APP ON STUDENTS ACADEMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY. Journal of Emerging

Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR), 7(3), 1039-1043.

Vázquez-Herrero, J., M-C, N.-R., & Rodríguez-Vázquez, A.-I. (2021). Intersections between

TikTok and TV: Channels and Programmes Thinking Outside the Box. Journalism and

Media, 2(1), 1-13.

Xu, L., Yan, X., & Zhang, Z. (2019). Research on the Causes of the “Tik Tok” App Becoming

Popular and the Existing Problems . Journal of Advanced Management Science, 7(2), 59-

63.

Yu, J. (2019). Research on TikTok APP Based on User-Centric Theory. Applied Science and

Innovative Research , 3(1), 28-36.

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Zea, Q., & Heekyoung, J. (2019). Learning and Sharing Creative Skills with Short Videos: A

Case Study of User Behavior in TikTok and Bilibili. Manchester: International

Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2019.

Zhu, C., Xu, X., Zhang, W., Chen, J., & Evans, R. (2019). How Health Communication via Tik

Tok Makes a Difference: A Content Analysis of Tik Tok Accounts Run by Chinese

Provincial Health Committees. International Journal of Environmental Research and

Public Health, 17(192), 1-13.

Zuo, H., & Wang, T. (2019). Analysis of Tik Tok User Behavior from the Perspective of Popular

Culture. Frontiers in Art Research, 1(3), 01-05.

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APPENDIX

Survey Questionnaire
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