There is a space for everyone on there – the good, the bad and the plain bizarre. That means that in one session, you could consume reams and reams of engaging videos – familiarising yourself with creators, trends and communities in the process. Following on from the era of the YouTube wormhole, TikTok’s algorithm recommends you the content you subconsciously crave – but unlike YouTube, these videos are under a minute long. Asking questions, supporting worthy initiatives and mass-protesting in an app space is something that comes naturally to these digital natives. Encountering somebody online that you relate to before following them religiously, DM-ing them and inundating them with supportive comments and queries whenever they post is distinctly Zoomer (Gen Z) culture. Just as being a boomer isn’t necessarily about belonging to an age demographic, but a rather a mindset, there's no age threshold for TikTok it's more a willingness to hurl yourself into the chaos of the internet. I am technically too old for TikTok, sitting just outside its core 13-24-year-old market. The Zoom horror that was 2020’s most timely hit
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The street art that expressed the world’s pain
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Now, at the end of 2020, TikTok is the most downloaded app of the year – and it's changed an awful lot more than just how we consume media online. But while the grown-ups were busy trying to work out the implications of national security threats from the Chinese Communist Party and a bifurcated US/China internet, teenagers were nurturing the most powerful tool they had ever seen. It popularised short-form video and developed a recommendation algorithm that made it one of the world’s strongest video competitors. The first major social media app to be run beyond the purview of Silicon Valley, the Chinese-owned platform joined the likes of WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter in the social media diets of many, despite a multitude of controversies.
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With stories about an algorithm that suppressed "ugly and poor creators" and President Donald Trump considering a US ban, TikTok was at once the most beguiling and maligned app of the year.