TikTok, the company that changed internet culture

Back in 2019, in the calm, pre-pandemic times, it was said that no one of voting age could understand TikTok. Even its creator, Zhang Yimin, then 36 years old — at 41 he would become the richest man in China — admitted that he didn’t know how to use it, telling South China Morning Post that he was “too old” for the app.

Five years later, TikTok is much more than just teenage territory. It has changed everything in internet culture and has become a digital artifact that is imitated and hated in equal measure. On Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban in the United States, citing national security concerns. The platform shut down for around 12 hours, but came back after Donald Trump promised to save the app. But for those 12 hours, 170 million users were left grappling with profound boredom and loneliness.

An X-ray of TikTok would provide valuable insight into its profound influence on digital life and on the ways we consume and create content online. Its followers — many of whom could be classified as addicts — only needed 35 minutes of interaction with the platform’s algorithm to become captivated, or rather, hooked on its rapid, dopamine-driven rewards. We know this thanks to internal TikTok documents disclosed by NPR. This level of engagement had never been seen before on the internet. Not even Mark Zuckerberg in his prime would have imagined such a level of user engagement. So the first novelty of TikTok is its personalized algorithm, which is so finely tuned that some users feel it can almost read their minds.

TikTok doesn’t need anything from you to create a fine-tuned profile of your tastes that will keep you glued to the screen. It doesn’t need you to define yourself like other social networks do, it only needs you to breathe, exist, and open the app. The first time it will show you a unique video in an infinite loop, and it will start to measure your reactions: a second of viewing indicates interest, a tap on the screen, desire. The algorithm draws up the user’s profile, not based on their choices but on their behavior, reactions that are often unconscious and that allow it to create an irresistible content feed. This feed, called “For You,” is powered by a sophisticated machine learning engine, described by ByteDance engineers as “complex sublinear computation.” For TikTok users, however, the experience couldn’t be simpler or more enjoyable: open the app, watch a video, relax, and passively consume content endlessly. They literally don’t have to do anything else. The addictive power of this algorithm is so widely recognized that it has become a category of content itself, with videos under the hashtag #tiktokaddict amassing nearly 600 million views.

Suddenly, the rest of the internet began to feel outdated and dull. TikTok has accelerated digital culture with its short-video format, defining the internet’s modern era from 2020 onward. Its meteoric rise has left competitors scrambling to copy the format: Instagram introduced Reels in August 2020, and YouTube followed with Shorts just a month later. Failing to mimic this format quickly became the fastest way to irrelevance on the internet.

Even if you don’t have a TikTok account, you’re likely influenced by its rapid, visually driven culture, as its content is replicated on other platforms in the same style. It’s often joked that watching Instagram Reels is like seeing TikTok two weeks late.

This insatiable appetite for bite-sized videos has also reshaped how content is consumed in traditional news outlets and on TV. Shows and series are now consumed in fragmented bursts. The rapid, successive dopamine hits fueled by TikTok’s speed and constant promise of action and novelty have drastically reshaped our attention spans. This shift has even influenced the length of Netflix episodes, many of which now run under 20 minutes — a duration that already seems very long to us.

TikTok subverts digital aristocracy

By prioritising novelty and discovery, TikTok’s powerful algorithm grants visibility to creators who have barely achieved status on the platform. In other words, a creator can reach the Olympus of virality in 30 seconds, even if they have few followers — something that’s impossible to achieve on Instagram and YouTube. And, although it is also true that TikTok is not the most lucrative, the algorithm’s accessibility is addictive. On TikTok, you don’t have to be famous; the platform itself makes you famous.

“TikTok’s algorithmic infrastructure levelled the playing field, it’s not the same sanitized Instagram Explore grid or most prominent YouTube creators,” Jess Rauchberg, a professor at Seton Hill University in New Jersey and an expert in the economics of digital creation, told the BBC.

TikTok has made video the internet’s mainstay, unlocking global creativity for both established and emerging creators with its sophisticated yet user-friendly editing tools and templates anyone can follow. The result is polished, relatively simple content that has expanded the horizons of creators who didn’t even consider themselves audiovisual artists. An endless loop of engaging content, all without lifting a finger (or just one, for scrolling).

On TikTok, as mentioned earlier, effort takes a back seat. For some experts, one of its most important merits is that it has eliminated a syndrome that had been weighing down the internet: decision fatigue. On TikTok, you open the app and immediately have a loop of content — no decision required. This break from decision-making is very attractive. Short, clever videos appear before our eyes in an endless vertical flow, an infinite scroll that provokes a state very close to happiness.

A study by Baylor University in Waco revealed that the experience of TikTokers produces “high levels of the flow state and time distortion,” conditions typically observed when one is absorbed in a task that provides pleasure and well-being. When, from the outside, we see someone using TikTok, it’s not difficult to tell that they are engrossed. And it is precisely this self-absorption that highlights the effectiveness of the fortuitous reward system that is in TikTok’s DNA. With each scroll, something better could come. Or not. We don’t know, but it is the uncertainty and the eternal promise of novelty that keeps us hooked.

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