Of all the TikTok critics the most unexpected is Isaiah McCall, a New York comedian and founder of the Yard Couch. This social platform should be McCall’s favorite hangout; however, he is one of the first to sound the alarm about its effects on people’s social lives. According to McCall “TikTok is fast becoming the most destructive social media platform that has ever existed”, the argument focuses on the interface that is explicitly designed to hijack and shorten the attention span and dopamine receptors.
TikTok and marketing, it is more harmful than many think
I wouldn’t define myself as a TikTok user, I find the videos uninspiring, but if we talk about short YouTube videos I can see whole hours of my day disappear. In the American Union, users spend an average of 19.6 hours a month watching videos. It is about 2 business days per month considering hours of sleep. It is an important portion of a person’s life, if we think annually it is almost a month a year.
My readers might argue that the same thing has been said about social media in the past, but I would remind them that according to Science Direct (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958821000695) Instagram’s worst concerns proved true, the platform’s algorithm causes depression in young teens. On Instagram, 55 percent of users are women and its most important age segment is between 25 and 34 years old. TikTok users are younger and mostly in the 18-24 age segment. Women also favor the social network with 57 percent of all users.
Not only is it a huge waste of time, there are also privacy concerns for users. According to Genius GL, the two plans that collect the most information from their users in the video space are YouTube and TikTok, but in the second case those that collect the information are third-party apps, that is, it is not known where the information is. (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/tiktok-shares-your-data-more-than-any-other-social-media-app-study.html) What makes TikTok special in terms of privacy is its ability to limit content from Big Data (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/tiktok-shares-your-data-more-than-any-other-social-media-app-study.html), in 2019 the social network was able to reduce the content about the demonstrations in Hong Kong. It could be argued that we are facing a social network that is not only capable of using our information to sell products, but is also capable of automatically creating information gaps.
If we think of TikTok and marketing, we must consider what is consumed. The most serious problem is the content, millions of people, mostly children, are addicted to learning a new dance, a new lip sync, a new joke; and those who do their best to dramatize this fervent collective improvisation are rewarded with likes, comments, and shares. Short videos are constantly delivered that, according to McCall, “act like digital cocaine with an absurd effect on dopamine and the human brain. It’s like a switch that tells your brain ‘hey, this feels good, do it again’”. According to Dr. Julie Albright, a sociologist specializing in culture and digital communication, she mentioned that TikTok users are “in this pleasant state of dopamine, of letting go. It’s almost hypnotic, you’ll keep looking and looking.” It is not the first time that I have heard an author relate social networks to cocaine, to the extent that it no longer surprises me. However, I recognize that when using TikTok I can’t easily put my phone down.
Albright and McCall may be right, the use of TikTok among adolescents in Mexico is alarming, according to a Global survey of 4,500 Consumers carried out in mid-2021, China is the leader in use of the social network. Three quarters of the population of that country have used the platform in the last twelve months. But among the top 10 countries, 4 are on this continent. Brazil is the second place and Mexico the third with 40 and 37 percent of use in the last year, respectively.
This clearly indicates a success for the owners of TikTok and demonstrates why the brand value exceeds 40 billion dollars. Let’s not forget that a commercial success of an addictive product tends to end very badly, read cigarettes. In Marketing we must take this problem seriously, in an age of cancellation and identity politics, a popular service today is vilified tomorrow.
The argument in marketing can tell itself. A popular platform always attracts brands. TikTok is the ClickBait of video: short and very satisfying. TikTok-based campaigns have their advantages, they have a guaranteed audience and they meet the requirement of being cutting-edge. The argument against TikTok follows the same lines as any criticism of social networks, they are addictive and harmful to self-esteem. Until now, this line of discourse has not dissuaded consumers and therefore neither brands.
Social networks will not go anywhere and if TikTok disappears there will be two more in its place or some other will copy its functionality. The only way is to educate teenagers about the danger of abusing this medium (or any other) and for brands to use it responsibly.