If you don’t know what tiktok is, it’s a streaming app where people can watch or upload short videos. It was based off the app musically where people went famous for lip singing to different audios but the expanded to a larger selection of trends. As of right now, tiktok has over 1 billion viewers monthly.

Now let’s get onto why tik tok is so addicting. I talked with Alyvia Mingenback about the app. She told me she feels like she gets on at least 57 times a day. When we talked about why it’s so addicting she told me “It’s something to do when I’m bored, I just go on it without thinking/ It’s just so easy to go on and I always see something different”. I also talked with Hailey Peterson who basically told me the same thing. “I am constantly on the app. All my friends are on it and it gives me something to do”. These were just two random girls at Great Bend High School who both agreed they spend more time on tiktok.  So I decided to research why this is and was able to find lots of information, especially from the website bootcamp, on why some people become so obsessed with the app. When you first get on tiktok it takes you straight to your for you page. Now this page is made by the tiktok processing system. It finds the videos that you have watched for a long time or shared or liked or any sort of interaction with it and gives you more that are related to that on your for you page. That way, they can gett you to keep you scrolling. Now the more interesting part about this is not only does it show you videos you like but also videos that you wouldn’t be interested in. According to the website bootcamp, Melody Wilding said “One of the most surprising findings of operant conditioning is that if you want to train an animal to do something, rewarding them consistently is not the best way to do it. What’s more effective is to give the animal rewards sometimes and at random intervals- what’s known as intermittent reinforcement¨.  We could also be drawn to how easy the app is to use. If you think about it, it’s one simple swipe and you move on to the next video. You’re not interested in one? You simply slide your finger and a video comes up. It is also self explanatory to record a video. Anyone could be a publisher or a creator, or you can simply just watch.

Over 60 percent of tiktok users are under the age of 30. Over half of that is under the age of 19. This shows that a higher number of the viewers on tiktok are of the younger ages. Tiktok has a lot of the same draws that other social media apps have. It’s the thing that everyone does. If you ask around the high school the majority of students have the app. It’s as simple as your friend has it and sends you the link to watch the tiktok but it tells you you need to download it to see the video and all of a sudden you’re swiping. Then you go to the popularity side. You get the gratification from getting likes and comments. We can also think of the attention spans of humans. US humans are typically only interested in something for so long. Majority of tiktok audios are under 15 seconds keeping it brief and not making us pay attention to one thing for too long so we don’t get bored of it. While there are some videos that get longer with the added feature, you still get to pick what videos you spend your time on. Overall, tiktok is an app that changes itself to fit your liking while also throwing the curves at you which keeps you coming back.