Representation amongst TikTok’s leading influencers has always been an issue, and most of it can be attributed to the fact that many content creators who come from marginalized backgrounds get their ideas stolen by bigger creators or are not credited for their ideas. You may be wondering: why does it matter? It’s just a social media app, and the app is known for being a space where creators are meant to build off of trends on the app. However, it’s important to understand the power of representation and how it shapes society and the people of the future. Users of TikTok may be aware of the countless trends that promote negative beauty trends. Trends that cause the people in the video and in the comments to hate their own appearance. For example, the trend where people would attempt to remove their double chins or the trend where people would compare their noses and deem theirs not beautiful if it wasn’t slim and straight. A more diverse “For You” page of TikTok would allow users to see different types of people on their TikTok feed, and maybe users would feel less inclined to hate their ethnic features because TikTok has deemed white European standards as the beauty norm.
Creators on TikTok have raised the issue before about how Black TikTokers, for example, are rarely at the top of the sounds they’ve trended or are rarely recommended on the “For You” page. TikTok says it is based on an algorithm and personal preference, but if the creators who are POC and other intersectional identities are not visible to a large number of viewers and are also not promoted by TikTok, those creators can very easily be pushed out. It becomes a cycle of the same TikTok creators being promoted and therefore the same type of content gets recycled. The type that celebrates only one kind of beauty and ostracizes anything that does not fit into that.
TikTok remains so relevant and interesting to millions of people all over the world because of how accessible it is. The platform is able to gain popularity from the idea that anyone can get a viral post; that just about anyone has a chance of being featured and one day building their audience to celebrity status — for the most part, this is pretty true. The issue that arises is when the people whose content creates trends across all social media platforms are being left out of the hype, and when we see less diverse faces and voices, TikTok prevents its audience from being able to experience a truly diverse internet experience.
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