If you haven’t yet installed an application that’s considered a hit by teenagers, TikTok, and see what’s all the fuss about – dare to do so. After all, isn’t it better to do this as soon as possible so you don’t lack behind the rest of the world and trends and see if it’s really as interesting as it seems or that it isn’t something for you?

TikTok: Love at First Sight or Nothing New?

Yes, TikTok is a trendy app. Statistics say that it has over 800 million active users. It makes it the seventh most popular social media platform in the world. It’s a vast result knowing it only exists for three years in the global market. Last year, TikTok had 740 million downloads and was, believe it or not, the second most downloaded app in the world according to a Betway survey.

What Happens When You Install TikTok?

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Installation of the app is very simple, as with any other social media app. But you don’t have to sign in with TikTok to watch and search for videos. Just install the app and confirm your age. Specifically, TikTok has a policy that it can’t be used by children under the age of 13. After confirming the age, a For You page opens up. It’s one of the two front pages this app offers. In addition to For You, there’s a Following page where are videos of people you follow. If you don’t log in, this page isn’t available. Plus, this app is very similar to Instagram – there’s a front-page, a searchable section, and your own profile. Simple as that.

In the beginning, you’ll understand – you’ll naively start searching TikTok and watching videos thinking you won’t get caught in the“machine”. It takes very little to notice new trends, on what songs lip-syncs are done, and what challenges are “in”. The first thing that will surprise you is the animals – most of all dogs and cats dancing to the background song. Very funny when you first see it. The next to come are the various dance challenges as well as the word challenges. It all seems very cool and interesting. Like any application when you first start using it…

Does TikTok Encourage Creativity or Copying?

As the description of the app says, this is the place where short videos with various effects and background music are published. Emphasizing the importance of creativity, TikTok encourages users to post their videos and connect with others. Because of this, young people make a lot of effort to incorporate a dose of creativity and imagination into their videos. But now we come to a small question. It was fun to see a cat dance once, a dog dance a second time, a hamster dance a third time, but where’s actually the creativity? Or we see copying here?

There are opinions that TikTok is no different from other social networks. It even looks very similar to others. The difference is that here videos are the format that’s primarily posted, while on Instagram, for example, you can post stories, photos… There’s still an option to post likes, comment, and share content on another network, but also to download to mobile phones. Also, the number of views is visible. Therefore, it acts as an upgrade to existing social networks. The problem that remains is evaluating oneself through likes and the number of reviews. Still, any comments are better than no comments. Still, the opinions of others are more important, no matter how cruel (and indeed they might be).

Although TikTok is a new application, compared to its ancient ancestor Facebook, there are still posts in which young people express their views, opinions, feelings. There’s still room for creativity and innovation in creating such posts. There are still those who’ll leave a nice comment, as well as those who will want to taunt you. Unfortunately, there’s always the risk that someone else’s opinions become overly important to us, as well as the risk that others’ opinions mean absolutely nothing to us.