Can you imagine a day without social media? Most of us can’t. We are living in a world with more than 2 billion people on social media, more than 70 million Instagram photos uploaded everyday and 300 hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute. Masses of people have found an enlarged addiction to one social media platform more than the other ones — TikTok. But why are we so addicted to it? 

TikTok has more than 800 million users, making it one of the biggest social media platforms to this day. They use very discreet but smart strategies to amplify their traffic. Here are some of the strategies they use:

1.They personalize your feed

Most social media platforms have an explore page where you receive content that is supposed to interest you, and so does TikTok. The reason why TikTok is better at this than some other social media platforms is because they completely personalise your experience. On your explore page you will keep receiving content that is similar to the content you mostly engage with. Whether you show interest in certain content with likes, comments, shares, TikTok remembers all of that and uses it to pull you in a loop of continuous scrolling.

“The reason why TikTok is better at this than some other social media platforms is because they completely personalize your experience.“

2. Immediate content

Once you open the app, it will immediately start playing short video clips. You don’t have to click any button to start viewing content, it’s so easy! At this moment in time, we are too lazy or don’t have time to do extra unnecessary things, so the easier and more accessible something is, the more we will want to revisit it.

3. It loops videos

Most social media platforms let you view a certain post and then scroll further. For example, Netflix gives us a few seconds before the next episode starts playing automatically, while TikTok uses a smart strategy of looping videos again and again. As the videos are shorter, some of them will keep looping without our notice, which brings me to my next point:

“Tiktok uses a smart strategy of looping videos again and again.“

4. Quick and short content

Tiktok content mostly goes up to 15 seconds — a very short time span. As we are watching these short videos, we aren’t actually realising how much time we are spending attached to this app because in our minds we are convinced we are watching only a few eight to fifteen-second videos.

5. Catchy music

Nearly all videos on TikTok have a song in the background, and as the song clips are short they become very catchy, making us want to come back to the app to find more memorable music. It’s also a great platform for growing singers and producers with the fact that pretty much any sound can go viral!

6. The human need of connection

One thing that each and every social media platform has in common is connecting people from all around the world. People strive for social validation, and if they can pursue it through the internet with nearly minimal effort, they will take that chance. We love being in the know about what other people are doing and we love letting other people know what we are doing. Our ego needs a place to display itself, and the internet is the perfect place for that. It’s easily accessible and it reaches a large number of people.

“People strive for social validation, and if they can pursue it through the internet with nearly minimal effort, they will take that chance.”

These are the prime strategies that the team behind TikTok implements into their platform to create such an addicting app. As of September 2020, TikTok has 800 million active users all over the world, 2 billion downloads making it Apple App store’s most downloaded app and more than a billion TikToks are being viewed daily. Those numbers are only growing from day to day.

Written by Klara Tot