Tiktok Takeover at Lakeland

“Coco when mommy says stop you say okay… I’m just a baby!”

“Sup baby take me out to dinner”

“Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious.”

抖音 or Dǒu yīn is a video social network owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd with over one billion users. TikTok, the English translation, is what many Lakeland students know of this app as.

TikTok is a platform that lets people make and post videos about absolutely anything to the public or to just friends. People can like and comment on them to show how they feel about the video. 

Alison Clanin, a junior at Lakeland spends roughly four hours scrolling through TikTok every day. Her favorite TikTok is the one that shows recipes and when I asked her if she thought the app was a good or bad thing she said: “TikTok is probably bad but I don’t care because I watch it every day”. 

TikTok has some upsides such as the recipe ones that show delicious or healthy meals to cook or the cleaning ones which are satisfying and are sometimes educational.

Ben Beamer, also a Junior at Lakeland spends a good two or three hours scrolling every day. His favorite sound is “the one that’s like ahhhh with the guy screaming” and when I asked him if  he thought the app was a good or bad thing he said, “I think it’s a bad thing but I like it so I’m not complaining”

The statement about how TikTok is bad but people will continue to watch it is misleading and sort of odd, but I agree in a sense. I believe that the app is a very bad thing and will continue to not help my generation grow into success and I will continue to spend many hours of my day scrolling through videos. 

The whole app is extremely addictive and can get increasingly more addicting the longer you spend scrolling. People will share very disturbing information, way too much information, or information at all. 

Famous people on TikTok have no other life other than to make videos and to overshare about every aspect of their lives, and they get paid. Everything about the platform is not ultimately rewarding, but I and many Lakeland Students will continue scrolling through videos for hours and hours. 

My favorite is the one that says “I went to the fridge to get a snack and weren’t there”, but I mostly go on TikTok to see the cute babies, puppies, or baby cows.