Social Media After TikTok Podcast Transcript

Even if you've never used TikTok, it's changed your life.
Downloaded more than 3.5 billion times, people in the UK spend, on average, 27.3 hours on TikTok per month. That's more than an entire day every month, and that's the average.
Why? We'll explore how TikTok has changed social media for consumers and brands, other social media platforms, and regulators.

Taryn Ward  Hi, I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  And I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And this is Breaking the Feed, Social Media Beyond the Headlines.

Steven Jones  We're taking a closer look at the core issues around social media, including the existing social media landscape to better understand the role social media plays in our lives and in society.

Taryn Ward  By thinking about where social media started and why, and thinking about how it's changed, and why, we're better placed to consider which of these changes have been for the better and for whom, we hope to appreciate the current landscape and anticipate the decisions regulators, big social and consumers are likely to make moving forward or fully, will save any future speculation for another episode.

Steven Jones  Over the past few episodes, we've looked at the early days of online social networks, starting with the earliest online social networks and working our way through social media after smartphones. Today, we'll look at how TikTok changed social media, and what we know so far about how it's changed our lives more generally.

Taryn Ward  As always, we'll start with a question. How has TikTok changed the social media landscape? With two secondary questions? Are these changes consistent with the early goals of online social networks? And what does it mean for future online and in-person, social networks and communities? 

Taryn Ward  These are big questions. And undoubtedly, we've bitten off more than we can chew. But let's start with a quick reminder and an admission. Early online social networks were designed to better connect us in new ways. As we've traced the history of social media over the past few episodes, we've seen that some platforms were designed to do this more than others. And some were actually used to do this more than others.

Taryn Ward  We don't have a crystal ball. There's a lot of great work being done right now in terms of better understanding how TikTok has impacted our lives. But no one knows for sure how this will play out over time. We can only use what we know to make an informed guess based on what we know about previous social networks and what we've seen so far. 

Taryn Ward  When we think about how TikTok has changed social media, we need to think about three core things. 

1. how has TikTok changed social media for consumers and brands.
2. as a result, how has TikTok changed social media for other social media platforms? And 
3. how has TikTok changed social media for regulators? 

Steve, first question is always how is TikTok changed social media for consumers and brands.

how has TikTok changed social media for consumers and brands. 2. As a result, how is Tik Tok changed social media for other social media platforms? And 3, how Tik Tok changed social media for regulators? Steve, first question is always how is Tik Tok changed social media for consumers and brands?

Steven Jones  I mean, I think the first question is, is TikTok really a social network? And, and if not, what is it? I mean, it's, it's, it's a video hosting service, right? I mean, users can create videos that are edited in various ways. And you know, because of the, the origin of the platform, which was really sort of like these music clips, there, those, those videos are often backed by, by music, and we've seen it that has huge impact on the on the music industry, just these clips can become Tik Tok famous, and therefore commercially successful just because they're on the platform. And the algorithm recommends the content based on you know, the the activity that you've had and the things that you've liked. And I think, you know, my, my daughter, who's a much bigger, TikTok user, than me says that the comments are often where a lot of the action is, when we're reading the comments to the videos are around a really important, but it is quite interactive. If we think about what you just said about where the origin of social media started, which was to connect us, this seems to be much more like a sort of YouTube-type video, entertainment system, these video entertainment for people with very short attention spans, let's put it that way. It has obviously caught the imagination, and there are social aspects to it, but it's not really following the same purpose that the original networks did. What do you think?

Taryn Ward  Oh, I think those are some great points. I think, you know, there as you said, there are some social components of it, the ability to share content, obviously, and to message each other directly. But it does seem like that's not the primary goal of the platform. I don't think there are many people who pick up their phone and say, I want to connect with others. So I'm going to open TikTok. I may be wrong, but the people who I know at least in this is sort of across a number of different age groups. That's not what they're consciously telling themselves. It seems to be more about sort of wasting time and connecting with people might be a benefit, but it's not necessarily the driving force.

Steven Jones  Yeah, that I think that's right. For me. It is it's a network, but it's not really social. In fact, it seems to be mostly antisocial, you you see a lot of people sitting on their own, just watching these little video clips or more often, you know, sliding through things that they're not interested in till they find that little nugget of gold that they that they are interested in. But people are spending an absolutely horrendous amount of time. I read this week, people in the UK spend 27.3 hours on TikTok a month. That's more than a full day on TikTok on your own. Just watching these little video clips, you know, that is not sociable in any way, shape or form, is it?

Taryn Ward  No, I think that's I think that's definitely true. Even if you're sharing that content later on, the primary purpose isn't to connect directly, even so, so primarily video hosting service, absolutely. But it does meet the definition we've borrowed for what a social network is. Hope you enjoyed all that. Also, ignore it now. Because TikTok allows users to construct a public profile within a bounded system. It articulates a list of other users with whom users share a connection. And users can view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others in the system. To put it simply, the ability to engage with other users, even if not the primary objective of the platform is central enough to both the purpose and actual use that it makes sense to think of TikTok as a social network, even if loosely, or sort of on the periphery of social networks. And it's generally treated as such by users, competitors, and regulators. So it's helpful to sort of be consistent with, with those groups of people, especially because that's who we're really looking towards today. A few fun, fast stats, TikTok is has been downloaded 3.5 billion times. It's only the fifth app to accomplish this. And it's the first non-Meta app. During COVID. They saw a growth rate of 180%, among 15-to-25 year olds.

Steven Jones  Wow. I mean, let's be honest, we would be happy to see growth in, in Bright when it launches anywhere close, like a 10th of that in the beginning, we'd be pretty happy, we'd be pretty happy. It's impressive. 180%.

Taryn Ward  It's incredible. It really is. And you can't argue with it.

Steven Jones  No, you can't. I mean, I mean, you can because, you know, it's the social media equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is also very popular, but not necessarily very good for you. But you know, it is interesting that this, this app is the first one to really challenge Meta, I mean, I actually didn't know that until I in we were prepping for this that it was, you know, the first non-Meta app to be downloaded that many times. But it sort of makes sense, I think. Yeah. It but it's, that's that's a scary statistic, isn't it? 3.5 billion people spending, you know, up to a day a month on this on this app. And it makes sense. Because we also saw that the average user opened this 19 times a day. I not I've rarely used it. Because of the security concerns. I've not had it on my blog, I had it on my phone, I put it, I downloaded it. Tried it. And you know, as we'll talk about in a minute, I can watch most of the content that they produce on, on Instagram, but, but yeah, children are spending what was it 75 minutes a day doing this, which is let's face it for most children, probably more time than they spend doing homework.

Taryn Ward  Yes, and 19 times a day, I'm struggling to think of anything that I do 19 times in a single day. It really is, you know, even if even if that 75 minutes is really broken up, it starts to add up. And it raises a lot of questions about attention spans and some other longer-term effects. But it's it's having a tremendous amount of change. It's creating a lot of a lot of change anyway, partially because more than other apps users of Tiktok struggle to distinguish between advertising and other content. So nearly 15% of Tik Tok users struggle to say whether something is an advertisement or other content. So, to tell the difference, that explains a lot about why brands are scrambling to make Tik Tok work for them. So, especially taken together 3.5 billion downloads 19 times a day, 75 minutes per day. And by the way, 15% of people using the platform don't know if you're trying to sell them something.

Steven Jones  Yeah, I mean, that's actually pretty scary. Right? And the it's obviously in the interest of the advertisers to make it more and more difficult to know whether you're advertising something to them because you're going to be much more tolerant of it. I mean, obviously we spent a lot of time looking at online, social media statistics and whatever and and use See all the time now, advice to advertisers about how to optimise their tick tock performance, almost to the exclusion of any other platform? Possibly that's because it is relative still relatively new and people aren't. Most businesses are haven't quite optimised their approach to tick tock, whereas for meta, they may be they have. But it is really startling. Everything I've looked like looked at in the last three weeks, it's been focused on how to sell things on tick tock, and why wouldn't you have sent me five minutes of attention a day, I probably, you know, back in the day used to spend more time watching children's TV then that day, but not a lot. Because between coming home from school doing homework and eating, there wasn't a lot more free time. Yeah, that is quite scary.

Taryn Ward  It is. And it's only one of several apps. I mean, I think there are very few young people who only use tick tock, it may be where they spend the most time or the thing that they open the most number of times, but I would guess, and I don't have stats, so I shouldn't speculate. But I would guess that people who really use Snapchat seriously, probably open it a similar number of times. And similar for Instagram, Facebook, and some of the other platforms. But But my guess would be that for those people who use tick tock and who are opening it 19 times plus per day, it's probably not the only app they're, they're clicking through.

Steven Jones  No, I mean, I'm sure that's true. I think the if you look at the average, now it's something like 7.9 social media apps per person, on their phone at the moment. I mean, that spans everything from YouTube through TikTok through to Facebook, and a lot has been made in the media about Facebook losing the young demographic. And certainly, you know, I hear my daughter's complaining about that, you know, that is a bit boring, whatever. But if you look at the stats, there are a vast number of people in the 15 to 30-year-old age group that are that are using using Facebook, globally, possibly not in North America and in the UK, and Western Europe as much as they used to. But Facebook has no demographic problem globally in that in the age demographic. So people are obviously not just using this it is Snapchat is discord. It's YouTube, it's Instagram, and maybe Twitter or X, I can't call it X. It's such a stupid name. So you know that all of these things people would be would be using, right? Maybe it's true that Discord is sometimes used for schoolwork. I suspect it's more often used to talk about games and, you know, other things that are more interesting. So yeah, it's this is 75 minutes on one platform 19 times a day times, potentially 7.9 social media platforms. This is why the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK labels. Social media is a major cause of sleep deprivation in in teens and young adults because they are doing this until two and three o'clock in the morning. I know, in my house that my my youngest is often up until three o'clock in the morning watching TikTok, but because she's a graduate student, it's okay because she doesn't actually have to get up and get to doing things until 10. But that's not that's not real life for most people. So sleep deprivation is a major long-term health hazard as well. There are real impacts of this not just on your mental health, but also your physical health.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, absolutely. And brands have really taken advantage of this and sort of jumped in. And I mean, you can't really blame them in a way. I mean, we can, as you said, and we do. But anytime you see this sort of growth and attention, it makes sense logically that brands would respond and would create content specifically suited to this platform. And although we're talking about this next, I'm skipping ahead a little bit. The fact that other platforms have added in features that allow that same content to be shared across multiple platforms, really means that a lot of marketing agencies have done big pushes in, in content for TikTok I mean, I can't remember the last time I went a week without somebody, you know, hitting me up on LinkedIn or email offering to create tick tock content for us. It's just become so you know, so common, it's a thing that everybody's looking for, and everybody's all of a sudden an expert in, in doing and so, we saw we saw consumer explosion, downloads, growth, brands respond, sort of add some fuel to that fire because some of the content they're creating is actually really good. unsurprising then, that we've seen the second change, which is how other social networks have changed because of Tik Tok and, again, given the impact out tick tock hard on consumers and brands, it's probably not so surprising. Luckily for us, Forbes has set out this really great timeline to remind us which social media platforms borrowed, which features and when.

Steven Jones  That was nice of them wasn't it?

Taryn Ward  It was it made preparing for this so much easier.

Steven Jones Yeah. So the fifth of August 2020, Instagram introduced reels, right after TikTok's initial explosion in popularity. And I don't know, I mean, I do I am on, as you know, because I send you things from Instagram. I saw a sort of thing on Instagram that said that sending people reels is there somebody's love language. And I thought, Oh, I recognise myself in that. But yeah, so really, it's difficult to find a reel that wasn't previously made and distributed on TikTok. I'm sure there are people who make real specifically for Instagram, by it seems to me that they are in the minority of people. Because whenever I see something really cool that I think my youngest daughter would like, she's like, oh, yeah, I saw that on tick tock weeks ago. So it that that is the reality, right? I'm obviously behind the times, because I refuse to have TikTok on my phone. I'm not sorry. Just the way it is. And, you know, reels, and reels and TikToks' overlap. I mean, I think it'd be Drew, then diagram, we probably get something like 95% overlap.

Taryn Ward  I think it's probably the most famous example of another social media network, taking something from Tik Tok, and making it huge. I read something from from the head of Instagram, a little bit defensively saying, while it's only natural, the world is moving towards videos. And so of course, we'd adapt something that allows people to share these videos. And on the one hand, you can sort of say, okay, that makes sense. But it wasn't their original idea. And it was so similar to tick tock that it's, it's hard to argue that it was sort of a unique take on what they were doing.

Steven Jones  I mean, I would, I would suggest that it's impossible to argue that it's a unique take. And whilst it's true that people are moving, you know, people like videos, people always like videos, YouTube exists, because people like videos. But you know, we talked to a lot of people at different meetings last year, and people also like seeing photos. And one of the comments that they made to us was they don't see their friends content on Instagram, or Facebook anymore. They don't see photos, what they see this constant streams of videos, and most of which are, you know, adverts of one kind or another because Instagram does a rather worse job at hiding the fact that their advertisements, I think, so yeah. Whilst Instagram might say that, I think talking to users, there's a lot of interest in actually seeing the things which they joined up for those platforms in the beginning, which is, you know, maybe it's a really nice lunch that somebody was had and wanted to share whatever you do on Instagram. But those photos are disappearing, more and more and more, they need to get rid of the little, you know, camera icon that they have and have a video camera, or perhaps just, you know, a little TikTok logo.

Taryn Ward  What do you think people would know what the video cameras symbol meant?

Steven Jones  No, I mean, I'm showing my age, obviously. You know, who uses a camera anymore, we talked about this previously, but back in the day, you had to take photos with the camera and then upload them to whatever online platform you're doing. This is why video, photo sharing, or Facebook took a while to take off, it didn't really take off until after the emergence of the smartphone. I don't know what they do. But it's certainly not an instant camera type thing, right? And that's what they were obviously they were borrowing that logo from the Polaroid instant camera. That's why those little pictures were square to begin with. Right? So but it's not, that's not it anymore. And it is interesting that the you know, anything written has disappeared, people's pictures have disappeared. It's got to be in the video or it doesn't exist. So it's not photos, or it didn't happen. It's videos, or it doesn't exist now. And I don't think that's great for us. Because there are people we need, particularly kids in the age group, they need to be able to do things like read occasionally, not everything that they ever want to know is going to be delivered by video. I hope Christ that'd be awful.

Taryn Ward  Well, I mean, to your point, that's, that's why, you know, we had sort of a chance to find out because in September of that same year, India banned Tiktok so YouTube responded by releasing its own algorithmic video sharing feature, and they call it YouTube shorts. It didn't launch globally until 2021. But it was it was in India first and this was a direct response to TikTok not being available. And to your point about people wanting video and wanting that, that kind of content, there was an opening, and YouTube stepped it up.

Steven Jones  Yeah. I mean, you can't blame them. It's a 1.4 billion-person market, just in India alone. I mean, that would make it a super app, if they didn't launch it anywhere else. It would be, you know, unforgivable not to. But, you know, YouTube, it is interesting that YouTube was, is one of the still one of the biggest platforms in the world is run by Google. And, you know, you've got a lot of there's a lot of billions items of content on there. But they still felt that they in order to be content and competitive, and, you know, maintain their position, they had to compete with TikTok or replace TikTok. In the case of India, I guess, it does make you wonder what it is about this format, which really plays with people's brains that makes them so keen to keep watching. And I mean, we, we can talk a little bit about that, maybe in a minute. But what happened next?

Taryn Ward  Well, Snapchat also understood this. So again, in 2020, this was late November, they launched Spotlight, which was a TikTok-like algorithm-based vertical video-sharing feed. And then we have a little bit of a gap. But then again, this year, we saw Twitter split users' timelines. So you know, you had the following in the for you, which is a borrowed Tiktok feature. And also, earlier this year, Spotify announced a redesign of its homepage. So all of these things, you know, you can say they were inspired by tick tock, or they were borrowed from tick tock, or they were stolen from tick tock. But the result is the same. These platforms have changed in important and fundamental ways, directly in response to TikTok's popularity with consumers and brands.

Steven Jones  Yeah. And you would look at that list. And you would think, well, some of those, you wouldn't think there was any reason why they would need to, I mean, Snapchat, we all know why Snapchat started, it was like, the photos that would disappear. So you could send things that you were worried about people being able to keep? Right, that was that was it, and Spotify, largest music app in the world, isn't it? You know, it's interesting that they felt that it needed to redesign their user interface to closer match something, which is an entirely different type of platform. Yeah, it really is. Now, I mean, I mentioned earlier that this algorithm that they have in TikTok, is potentially problematic. And, you know, you do have this feed. And what it does do, which is very clever, is that everybody sees every video is uploaded is sent out to someone. So there's the, that is distributed very widely. And so there's a lot of opportunity for things to go viral. And I think that has been, one of the good things about this is that if you, if you do produce them, which is really good, then there's tremendous opportunity from nowhere to have a viral video and make your name. But the problem is that the problematic part of the algorithm is that you see a lot of stuff which you're not genuinely excited about. And we'll scroll through, and then you see something great. And this is exact, this taps into exactly the same type of psychology that slot machines use to keep gamblers sitting at the slot machine, this intermittent reward taps into something fundamental in the human brain. And so it's not and that's not accidental, this is deliberately done to keep you on the platform and keep you addicted. And that, I think, is a huge problem. And the fact that it's now being adopted across the industry with these four you pages, makes it you know, highly problematic. You know, maybe we'll talk about in another episode, the the challenges with this, but it tends to around political and social issues create massive echo chambers, where you start to believe that the only viewpoint in the world is the one that you agree with, and that in order to get shares then, and likes, people produce more and more extreme content. So not only do to get an echo chamber, but it becomes more extreme. This was already happening. And when as they've introduced these changes, it seems only likely that it will make it worse.

Taryn Ward  I think that's a fair concern. It none of these features were designed to solve the issues with existing social media platforms. That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to create a new way of sharing and producing content and to get eyes on screens. We can talk about what other motivations might have been at play here on another episode. But I think that's a nice segue into our third, our third major piece of this, which is how TikTok has changed how social platforms are regulated. We've looked at how TikTok has changed other socials and how it's impacted consumers and brands. But it's also really important to think about this piece of the puzzle.

Steven Jones  This is a really interesting area because regulators globally have largely been hands-off social media, even after Cambridge Analytica, you know, other debacles, teen deaths, suicides, all of these things have happened and have been laid fairly and squarely at the feet of social media. You know, the the the Rohingya population has sued Facebook for a staggering amount of money, because they felt that they were complicit in the in the ethnic cleansing and genocide, in Myanmar, all of these things have been happening, and regulators haven't really got involved. And if can you name a single industry that has this type of impact on people's lives? Where particularly, you know, the US government and the EU have decided that they "Well, let's just let this play out and see what happens?"

Taryn Ward  No, absolutely not. I mean, any other industry that had this kind of influence, danger, risk associated with certainly within a decade, you would have seen some, some major efforts to rein it in. And I don't know if it's because of the link to free speech or freedom of expression that we've seen this sort of hesitation. I think that must explain some of it. But it really is unique because of that, and this is, you know, a particular concern of mine, because it is just so unusual and and problematic. The, the result of this has been literally deaths, I mean, teenagers have died, young people have died, and probably unnecessarily if regulators had been on board earlier, it may have been avoidable, some, some of them at least. And Tik Tok was different from the beginning. And we can talk about why and links to China and things like that. But Meta in particular understood early, that TikTok was different. And they spent a lot of money making that point for the benefit of consumers and regulators alike. The Washington Post broke the story last year about their hiring of a GOP for targeted victory. Do you remember this? They were hired to push local operatives to boost messaging about TikTok being a threat to American children. And his, his whole narrative. There were some leaked emails, it was a whole a whole story. And met it did comment. And they sort of admitted to some of it but sort of like, yes, we hired them. But that's okay. This is what we do sort of thing. I'm paraphrasing. So please, don't sue me.

Steven Jones  We'd have lobbying groups in Washington and Brussels, it was sort of that was the general thrust, right? We this is something we do.

Taryn Ward  Yes. And in the fact that they can't avoid it, because some of this is a matter of public record. So, so it's worth noting here, that Meta on the record. So what we know about what is what is documented in 2022, alone, Meta spent more than $21 million in the US, not globally. So this is just the US on lobbying efforts. So their influence and willingness and ability to put their thumbs on the scales is not insignificant. That's a lot of money to throw at a problem.

Steven Jones  It is a lot of money to throw at a problem. And now we're not, they're not spending, what was it? $31 billion on developing the Metaverse, they're gonna have significantly more money to spend on this problem. And let's not forget they have an absolutely enormous audience through their well Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger in which to spread this message not just to politicians, although they can obviously find target politicians and their staffers, but, but to everybody. And that's an audience, which TikTok would struggle to compete with, even now, that's a lot of people across a lot of platforms.

Taryn Ward  Yeah, it really is.

Steven Jones  I mean, to be fair, TikTok, you know, it really, it really is different. I we're going to talk about that in detail, I think in another episode, but it is really difficult for Meta to argue that they are trying to protect our children, and they're trying to persuade us, lawmakers, that they need to do that, given their track record, and given, particularly in the UK, that their health lead, said that they felt that the content that poor Molly Russell was exposed to, which was so abhorrent that the Coroner in that case, had to think about whether he wanted to show it to the jury. She said that was it was perfectly healthy for a 14-year-old to be exposed to that content. That's the level of judgement which is being shown by Meta. So pointing the finger and throwing stones if you're living in that particular glasshouse. TikTok seems a bit much, doesn't it?

Taryn Ward  It doesn't paint the best picture.

Steven Jones  (Laughter) That is a beautiful answer. It's not a Picasso, is it?

Taryn Ward  So, I've been in this country a while now I've picked up on, you know, a few subtle things like this is interesting. It doesn't paint the best picture, I think. So to Americans listening, this is complete nonsense, no, that still came out English. I think though we'll keep this you know, okay for under-18. So I'll leave it there. But it is, it is nonsense. So just to break this down a little bit Meta's spent a small fortune, I would argue a large fortune convincing the public and regulators, directly and indirectly, to turn their attention to TikTok danger, children houses on fire sort of approach. But I don't think they fully appreciated, whether that's because they got some bad legal advice and bad strategic advice. Or they're all just so fully immersed in their big social bubble, they didn't understand how the world works. Government doesn't work that way. And it couldn't even if it wanted to. It's not a precision knife, it is much more of a blunt object. So once their attention has been turned, and it was turned in focused in the direction of big social, TikTok is far from the only target. And consumers are catching on to all this too. In the last year, we've seen way more conversations about this than our first year doing this, or even our second year doing this. Every year awareness rises in in really serious ways. A lot of the concerns that Meta has flagged about TikTok also apply to Meta, whether you're thinking about privacy, missing disinformation, abuse and harassment, or the mental health risks, all these things, some are higher, and some are lower. But there really concerns about many of Metas platforms in the same way they are about TikTok.

Steven Jones  Absolutely 100% right. If the government does start to target a specific member of the industry, then that's clearly something which they can sue for. So they you know, you're right, obviously, they have to pick it and make it a level playing field. So I mean, it would amuse me no end if Meta was to sort of have been the cause of its own regulation. And I firmly believe there needs to be regulation as as do you so in our next series will investigate the rise and fall of social media empires from AOL and AIM to MySpace, GChat Clubhouse, whatever happened at Clubhouse, and arguably Meta and Twitter will look back at how those networks started, how they reached the lofty heights that they got to and their eventual, or probable decline.

Taryn Ward  Ooo, probable decline that sounds ominous. I, I like that. In the meantime, we'll post a transcript of this episode with references on our website. You can find this and more information about us at TheBrightApp.com. And if you'd like to take a deeper dive into the history of social media, check out our previous episodes.

Steven Jones  Until next time, I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  Thank you for joining us for Breaking the Feed, Social Media Beyond the Headlines.