TikTok is an app where people can share music, fashion, and dance through short videos. Due to its endless stream of content it is easy to loose track of time when “doom scrolling.” The app was launched in 2016 and immediately grabbed the world’s attention. This has conjured up a lot of speculation on whether the younger generations’ addiction to scrolling on this app has shortened people’s attention span. Â
Every minute we spend waiting, we usually pull out our phones and find some form of temporary entertainment. When I first heard of the TikTok ban I was worried I wouldn’t know what to do with my free time- and I think we as a generation depend on TikTok for not only entertainment but for news. Today, it seems traditional news outlets fail to grab the attention of our generation, leading us to use social media platforms such as TikTok to get up-to-date info on current happenings. What started as an app for entertainment and dance trends has rapidly transformed into an app with activism and real-time updates on events, such as Presidential campaigns and bills that are being passed. Â
The appeal of using TikTok as a news source comes from its speed and accessibility. Today there is a new mindset for news, the “news finds me”, which implies exactly what it says. It seems to me that people no longer need to subscribe to newspapers or look for articles because they believe that if something is important enough it will find them through social media platforms. Although this could be good for people’s mental health, not constantly having to sort through bad news, it also leads to people being less educated on current events. According to Pew Research 17% of US adults, 52% of TikTok users, get their news from TikTok. This increases the amount of citizen journalism, which leads to people who are not trained journalists spreading news- real or fake.Â
With the increasing citizen journalism on TikTok came a more diverse range of news. An issue with traditional media is censorship and biases. Getting news only from powerful corporations can often be misleading and leave marginalized voices even further minimized. With TikTok, people can see multiple sides to one story because there are a lot of opinions being shared about the same topic, which allows people to get more perspectives to base their own opinion off of. It is also very interactive because people can comment, like, or share videos that they find interesting. It can be more engaging to the younger generation, keeping people who let news find them, informed on important news stories and political updates. Â
Despite the diversity and communal nature of TikTok, there is a dark side to TikTok’s role as a media source. Anyone can make a video filled with false claims and share it with the world. Spreading misinformation is much easier on the app because there is no obligation to stay loyal to the truth. This is not to say that official news sites and companies don’t lie, but they are more obliged to fact-check. TikTok can also create echo chambers of a user’s preexisting beliefs because the algorithm promotes videos people will personally find interesting- rather than narrowing down their feed to strictly truthful, unbiased videos. While many news sources attempt neutrality, TikTok feeds into individuals’ biases which can be damaging. Â
TikTok’s rise as a news source today represents an opportunity for people to voice their own opinions, share different perspectives, and challenge the reliability of the news. Millennials are often mocked for believing everything they see online, but Gen Z appears to have fallen victim to the same mistake. Although according to a report by Oliver Wyman, “only %37 say they (Gen Z) fully trust the accuracy of social media news”, I feel as though the damage is done when false news is initially spread because the fake and often jarring information is stored in the brain. Regardless of its faults, it looks as though TikTok will be the news of the future. In my opinion, this is both beneficial and a threat to objective and factual news. Â