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Passive-Aggression
The Psychology of TikTok
Part 1: How is it transforming the way we learn?
Posted December 10, 2020
Recently I joined TikTok to understand how it differed from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and many other social media platforms. I observed a lot of behaviors that are further transforming how we interact.
What Is TikTok and Its Algorithm?
TikTok is a platform where creators can upload videos that are up to 60 seconds long; however, I've found that many content creators try to keep their videos to less than 30 seconds.
Think of it as a continuous feed of home-made videos where everyone is competing for your time. The more engagement a video gets in the form of views, likes, and shares, the higher the chances the video gets placed on the "For You" Page (FYP) and goes viral.
There are two tabs on the app, "Followers" and "For You."
- "Followers" is where you see videos made by the people you follow.
- "For You" is where the system pushes videos based on your viewing habits; therefore, content creators want their videos on the For You Page because they will get a lot more visibility to people who are not following them.
Many of these videos are fun to watch and fall into a few categories:
- Performance, such as dancing the same choreography or singing
- Commenting or performing with other videos side-by-side (known as duets)
- Augmenting other videos to create something different (known as stitching)
- Teaching others something new
I am sure there are other categories I missed, but you get the picture.
The algorithm used to show videos on the FYP consists of time spent viewing a video (including milliseconds), hashtags used, and music played. I can't tell from this end if it is also pulling in other data points from your phone, or if the artificial intelligence used is extracting what's happening in the video other than facial recognition. I reached this conclusion based on what I experienced when I first launched the app.
One of the first videos pushed to my feed was a police officer dancing to one of my favorite songs. I don't think the system knew that I watched the video only because of the song because every video after that one was of law enforcement officers dancing. I started to swipe up fast to see what other videos would show up on my feed.
This time, instead of police officers dancing, it started to show me videos of military people dancing. Since I wasn't interested in this type of content, I began another sprint of swiping up quickly, and I noticed that after a certain number of videos, the system force-stopped my swipe-ups for a fraction of a second. I believe it was trying to learn what I wanted to see. Eventually, I stopped swiping up and started to watch videos that I found interesting.
Transforming How We Learn
As a content creator helping people advance their careers, I started to think about leveraging this platform to share my expertise. Unlike my YouTube Channel, TikTok motivates content creators to be super creative and share their content in less than a minute.
On the surface, creating a video that has valuable content, creativity, and entertainment in less than 60 seconds sounds easy, but it is not. It takes a lot of planning and video editing. The only difference with long-form videos is that one can add additional clarifying context.
For someone who conducts three-hour lectures and one-hour webinars, I thought making 15 minutes videos for YouTube was hard, but it was a whole other level when it came down to TikTok. I found myself obsessing over making a less than a minute video that is valuable and entertaining.
Don't worry: You won't find me dancing or singing. I produced 18-second videos on workplace psychology topics such as telling someone's age by the number of spaces after a period or identifying passive-aggressive behavior, which went viral compared to how our brain is trained to read words, not letters.
As an educator, I ask myself, are we conditioning our society to learn content that has to be entertaining and consumed within minutes instead of hours? Will educators have to teach microbursts of knowledge in 15 minutes? How will this impact the future workforce and adult learning?
That said, this piece is a bit long to read in one sitting; therefore, keep an eye out next week where I share Part 2 and cover the darker side.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below and share this article with others.
