Why TikTok is so exciting for the boys

This article appeared at planning&analysis on January 21, 2020.

Gen Z in particular loves TikTok. More than 5 million users already use the app in Germany, and 1 billion worldwide. On average, German users call up TikTok 10 times a day and then spend around 50 minutes with the app, significantly more than on Facebook or Instagram. What fascinates young people about TikTok? What kind of user experience does it convey and what lessons can be learned for advertising use?

TikTok acts like a video grab bag full of nonsensical surprises. It offers a colorful variety of funny, whimsical, creative, and sometimes even useful videos that are fed to you in seemingly random order.

"TikTok has all the stuff in it that you try to keep out of your head when you're learning"

Student, 20 years

The point of using TikTok is therefore, so to speak, in the nonsense of the content, which is used, for example, in idle situations as an activating contrast program or when studying as a time-out to clear the head again. The videos remain entertaining and free us from the everyday requirement to be sensible and the performance pressure that is otherwise common in social networks.

The actual user experience is characterized by the moment of control in the first access, as the users judge the creators' works in a kind of continuous audition - hot or not. The thrill of these continuous decisions and the curiosity about the next video are enormously stimulating and ensure that sessions can last up to several hours.

By selecting the uninteresting videos, the user formally defines his or her personal limit of nonsense. Implicitly, he experiences a self-appreciation, because he elevates himself above excessive excesses of nonsense. The videos ultimately selected have the reverse effect of reflecting in them one's own childish delight in nonsense and seeing it legitimized by the mass success of the videos and the platform as a whole. From this perspective, the avoidable nonsense turns into a sense of the weird, of crazy little things or actions.

On closer inspection, the creativity, passion or even courage of the video producers is appreciated for the various postings. The users feel that the "good" videos were partly produced with attention to detail. Active users report that lip sync videos, for example, take several hours to practice, record and edit.

In this way, TikTok serves a completely different creativity than Instagram, which is all about aesthetic stagings that are in turn geared towards successful mass impact. TikTok is about creativity in action, about the fun of making things, including the joy of a successful result. While Instagram provides orientation with regard to one's own appearances, TikTok can relieve performance pressure and be seen as encouragement for one's own creations.

If TikTok becomes as influential for Generation Z as Instagram was for Gen Y, then a freer, less mainstream and more creatively focused next generation could emerge that nevertheless operates as a matter of course on a fully networked scale.

Due to its reach alone, TikTok is naturally also interesting for brands and advertising. The reception of TikTok is open to surprises and thus also to advertising messages. But brand accounts or challenges can also have a positive effect. The TikTok appearances of the Tagesschau make the brand appear younger, humorous and more approachable. Young users appreciate that Tagesschau is aware of TikTok and the interests of young people at all and actively engages with their world.

Although the users surveyed pass over the political debate surrounding TikTok, in a time when attitude and morals play a major role, brands should of course also take this aspect into account when deciding whether or not to use TikTok.