As social media usage rises during these times, new trends emerge. Never before has there been a social media platform that has brought the whole family together.
TikTok has become chock-full of intergenerational dance challenges and entertaining comedic skits. Celebrities, athletes, politicians, and reality star families like Andrew Cuomo, Lebron James, Jessica Alba, and many a Bravo Real Housewife are front and center creating wholesome content.
With 800 million users and more than 40% aged 16-24 years old, TikTok’s primary demographic is Gen Z; however, families and people of all ages are now bonding over TikTok. Here are the reasons why it has taken off.
We’re all at home
The most obvious reason for this trend is that we’re all at home with more time on our hands and parents want to be included. With Gen Z mainly being the content creators, parents want to understand and find activities to do with their children. Partaking in learning a new dance or creating a how-to tutorial has become commonplace. For Sherri Lopez, mother of one of TikTok’s largest stars, Addison Rae, TikTok is a family affair, “Tiktok has been so great for our family. We love spending time together, making videos, and making memories. It’s definitely brought us closer as a family, and it’s so much fun to share our videos with so many people and in so many parts of the world. We love bringing positive and fun content, hopefully putting a smile on others’ faces.”
It’s a positive place
Because cyberbullying issues permeate throughout social media, as a newer social channel, TikTok promotes creating positive and joyful content. They curate this by featuring inclusive trends like #StayHomeStayStrong, #TransvisiblityDay, #CelebrateDoctors, and many more.
Within these trends, there’s amazing content that inspires and entertains. TikTok stars focus on providing content that delivers happiness to their audience. Scotty Sire, who has 2.4 million followers and has worked with non-profits like Ad Council to talk about mental health, enjoys TikTok for its positivity, “TikTok is a place where I can co-create with my friends to make short, fun, goofy videos. Learning Tik Tok dances is great exercise and an awesome alternative to just playing video games or watching tv all day.”
This aligns with Generation Z and millennial’s ethos of accepting others and finding outlets for their mental health and self-care.
TikTok encourages collaboration
With many Gen Z’ers home from college now living with their siblings and parents, TikTok is a way for families to unlock creativity with the hopes of going viral. Recently, the #BlindingLights trend led to a lot of videos, including parents. One in particular from @Cloudtalk and included his parents garnered over 26 million likes and 83,000+ shares, which led to many remixes and follow up videos that gained additional visibility to his account.
Their virality is due to being featured on the For You page, where videos garner millions of views worldwide. Brian Freeman, CEO of influencer platform Heartbeat, expands on how trends encourage collaboration, “TikTok’s duet feature lets users piggyback on the videos created by the platform’s rockstars. This allows a new creator to follow an already popular dance while simultaneously promoting the original video. Whether the creators are piggybacking on top stars like Charlie DeAmelio or dueting in-person or remotely with their friends, it makes the platform feel smaller and more personal.”
Transcends generations
With TikTok becoming a place to express yourself at any stage of life, it is heartwarming to see people of all ages create a diverse array of videos that help them stay positive and connect with others during these tough times.