For anyone with shareable passions such as dance crazes, sea shanties, knitting patterns or Excel spreadsheets, TikTok is the place to be. The short-form, Chinese-owned video app has emerged as an accessible and playful global platform for 1bn users to indulge their obsessions, find an audience of like-minded followers and sometimes make money, too.
To those of a more conspiratorial mindset, however, the entertainment platform is an electronic Manchurian Candidate, creating the opportunity for the Chinese Communist party to manipulate public opinion, subvert democracies and peer into teenagers’ bedrooms. In June 2020, India banned TikTok following a border clash with China, cutting off 200mn local users from the service. The following month, then US president Donald Trump also threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns — but lost the election before he could enforce the plan. This month, the UK parliament closed down its own TikTok account fearing data leakage. “The prospect of Xi Jinping’s government having access to personal data on our children’s phones ought to be a cause for major concern,” MPs warned.
While rows rage about whether TikTok is either too trivial or too threatening, there is no doubt that it has become an extraordinary cultural and business phenomenon in more than 150 countries. The latest report from Pew Research Center found that TikTok had rocketed in popularity among American teenagers. Some 67 per cent of those surveyed said they used TikTok compared with just 32 per cent for the once-dominant Facebook. “TikTok isn’t just in the zeitgeist. It is the zeitgeist,” wrote Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information tech site.