Yes, there are a lot of things that are just silly and yes, most of what's happening on TikTok isn't fundamentally different than what's come before it. Frankly, many of the things I watch on TikTok are sort of things we did when I was in high school, we didn't record it. To be fair, according to my daughter, we just barely had electricity when I was in high school.
But one thing I've really liked is the amount of new music I've discovered on TikTok. Not surprising, given where it started, But they've made it very easy to find the songs used in the various videos and that's made it very easy to find new artists. For example, even though Roisin Murphy has been around for a good number of years, I had not heard of her until her song Ramalama (Bang Bang) became part of a dance challenge on TikTok. Once I created a Ramalama station on Pandora, that led me to a variety of artists that I had not heard of before.
I know that TikTok has issues related to privacy, but the teens who spend an average of 52 minutes/day on the site don't seem to be worried. And honestly, what SM site these days doesn't have a privacy issue? I have seen some inappropriate material and a few fake news pieces, but I'm still on the surface even though I watch a lot. And I've only posted twice, both times about dogs we have that are looking for their forever homes.
According to a recent article in Forbes, TikTok was downloaded 123 million times in the US, about a third of our population. And we're far behind both India and China in total number of users. The average time spent per day is just under an hour, and most videos are under a minute. They've had some controversies around the monetization of the music on the site and they will need to address that as they continue to grow.
You don't need an account to watch videos on TikTok, so if you haven't checked it out, you should. I've posted some of the music I've discovered though TikTok below in case you need some new artists to follow. I might start posting more, so say hi to Old Fart if you actually have an account.