What is TikTok?
The TikTok app has grown a ton of interest in people over the years. This app allows you to watch short videos of anything you want, and make videos for yourself. Since it has a lot of popularity, it’s used worldwide so anyone can use it. This is the reason why TikTok has a mind-blowing one billion users! TikTok is constantly developing more and more updates for its famous app. Some of the most well-known people on it are Charlie D’amelio, Brent and Lexi Rivera, Ben Azelert, Mr. Beast, James Charles, Stokes Twins, and so much more. It can be a great resource to do everyday things, such as cooking or crafts. You could also get very famous and make a lot of money if you get enough followers. This site was invented in China by Zhang Yiming, who is the CEO of the company, TikTok.
History of Social Media
Social media started to exist as soon as technology could handle them. During the
early 1970’s, email and chat programs made their debut. In 1993, the mosaic web browser was introduced, making it easier for people to use email and chat programs with a simple user-friendly graphical interface. SixDegrees.com and Classmates.com was the first accurate networking site in 1997. SixDegrees.com gained over three million users by 2000! Unfortunately, they didn’t make enough money, so they had to be shut down. Social media started to become a lot more popular in the early 21st century. The apps, Friendster and MySpace emerged. It was then supplanted by Facebook, which is now the world’s most popular site with three billion users worldwide! Along came Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Why ban TikTok?
The United States government is constantly discussing about banning TikTok. President Biden wants to illegalize the app because he disapproves of the Chinese owner, Zhang Yiming. President Biden feels that the link to China could cause a national comprehensive security threat
to the US government. Problem is that China is taking too much data from all the people that use it. This could be a complication for the 100 million people who use the app in the country. Since China is communist, the US fears it will try to steal the US’s top secret information.
“It is a matter of genuine concern”
TikTok vs Instagram
TikTok and Instagram have more traits different than they have in common. First, they both allow you to scroll endlessly watching short videos, and get many followers and likes that could lead you to become famous and make money. You make videos for yourself to get those followers and likes. The different traits are that the logo is very different from each other. Also, TikTok allows you to pause a video at any time, but Instagram cannot. In addition, Instagram can record from three seconds up to sixty minutes! Six times more than TikTok which can only record up from three seconds to ten minutes. Lastly, The most popular app is Instagram with almost double the users! TikTok only has around 1.3 billion users but Instagram has 2.32 billion!
Can it be bad?
Even though TikTok seems like a good site, it has many flaws. Some of them are that they can be inappropriate and addicting. Since TikTok can be very entertaining, it can start to become addicting. Being addicted could be bad for your mental health and your eyes, so you should manage your time with it by setting up some kind of time limit. The videos also have some incorrect facts. For example, a person named Mark Grenon reported on TikTok and other social media apps, that drinking bleach could cure the deadly virus, Covid-19. This led to many people to be seriously injured or even die. If the app could filter out the bad or incorrect facts, it would make it much better for people to use. Next, there are many cases of cyberbullying. Numerous people around the world will try to make someone feel miserable. Some people who had cyberbullied, drove people to hurt themselves of suicide. So this doesn’t happen, the app should automatically block people you don’t know from any kind of communication unless you know the person very well.
