I used to be one of the people who was addicted to watching YouTube videos. I watched it all the time, after I woke up, during the day, while I was eating,or before I went to bed. YouTube was my best friend, since it helped me in many ways such as when I didn’t understand what my teacher taught, I always looked up for something that helped me to understand more on YouTube, or when I felt stressed,I would look for funny video or i might find a short podcast video to make me feel better. The only thing that I didn’t like about YouTube was the advertisement on YouTube because sometimes it came with a long advertisement and I could not skip it or sometimes it came with two advertisements and it took so long till I could watch the video. If I want to watch the video without advertisement, I have to pay 49 baht per month to get a youtube premium, which not everyone can afford.
When I was a sophomore, I had a chance to go to America as an exchange student. I had one roommate, and she was from Germany. I was wondering all the time why she was always watching something on her iPad , then I asked her “what are you watching” and she said that she watched TikTok videos. It was my first time knowing the TikTok application. After I came back to Thailand, I just found out that not only my friends are addicted to TikTok, but also my grandparents as well. After a lot of people around me were spending their time on TikTok, it made me want to have my own TikTok account because I want to know why a lot of people are so addicted to it, and what made this application special than others. After I spent some time on it, it felt like magic since I could not leave it. I am just interested in how this application works, and I have no wonder why people are addicted to it.
How TikTok works
The way TikTok works is they ask you while you are registering what content you like to watch or are interested in, so they can show you the type of video that you like. It means that the video that shows you is the video you are interested in or it might not be exactly what you like but it is similar to, so you also might like it. After you use TikTok for a while, it will codify your feed to contents that you like and content that is similar to your interest.This is the reason why people keep watching it and cannot leave the application. Sometimes TikTok will random you a funny video and you will enjoy it and want to watch it more and more, and that makes sense. Apart from that TikTok also supports everyone to have self-esteem because they believe that everyone can be a star. Everyone can be 100% of yourself on TikTok, you can show off your talent and other people who like your talent will follow and support you. Many people become very popular from making videos on TikTok, such as cover dance, ASMR, mini vlog, singing, reviewing,comedy,or etc. A lot of tiktokers, who have enough followers, become favored because they have their fans to support. It is easy for them to have another step on a bigger platform such as a youtube channel. As we know, YouTube needs subscribers to make revenue, if you have a huge fan base then it is easy for them to start, since their fans will support them anyway because tiktok videos might be too short for them to get to know them. A lot of Thai ticktokers do that too.
TikTok or YouTube
To compare between TikTok and YouTube, which are both my favorite platforms. Firstly, the length of the video clip from YouTube depends on the owner channel, which can be a few minutes to many hours. On the other hand, the maximum length of video from TikTok can be only three minutes. That makes a huge difference, and also a big point that makes people use TikTok more often than YouTube. I would say that people just love it because it is short. Because of the limitation of TikTok that I mentioned earlier, TikTokers have to decide what they have to do on their video clips to make it concise. From the point of view of the audience, we really enjoy watching short videos but can entertain you the same as long videos. Secondly, TikTok has become popular during Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of influencers and celebrities have changed to use TikTok as a platform that helps them keep contact with their fans, since they can make fun video clips or other kinds of videos to help their fans still remember them, as we known during covid-19 all of us had to stay at home and cannot go out the same as before covid-19 and that included influencer and celebrities that they cannot go to work. Because a lot of people use TikTok as a daily platform, the merchant who was affected by covid-19 modulated to sell things on TikTok, since the merchant can live and talk to the customers. Instead of having their own shop, they only need a TikTok account to do their job. After a lot of merchants started using TikTok, the TikTok developer added one feature that can help them a lot, it is called “TikTok shop”.Every TikTok user can buy things from here, while the seller is living you only press the button and it will help you goto the shopping page, making it easy for customers to shop and pay. Merchants can also hire the TikTok influencer, who has the character match with their product, and who has a lot of followers. Otherwise, YouTube does not have this feature. Thirdly, TikTok always comes with a lot of new and popular content, since most of the TikTok users are people in the Z generation, it cannot be denied that they have really creative ideas. They can show their potential to the audience and it is easy for the audience to follow them. Nowadays, on YouTube we won’t see new youtubers as much as in the past. The only channel that is still popular is the channel that used to be popular and still has the subscribers, moreover it is hard for new youtubers to get success, you have to make sure that your content is created enough to make the audience want to watch. As I see it, a lot of people promoted their youtube video by editing the funniest part of the video and posted it on TikTok to make people in TikTok get interested and go watch it on Youtube. This shows us that TikTok has become very popular and it is accepted that this application is used by a lot of people nowadays.
The Difference kind of short video
Nowadays short video clips are popular, many applications added this feature, such as Instagram has “reels”and YouTube has “youtube shorts”. Every platform has their own benefits and similarities with one another. For example, the target audience from reels is mature audience, and most of the video clips come from TikTok. It also has to be concerned about the limited audio options due to copyright restrictions, while TikTok can have an extensive audio library for all users. After TikTok snatched the audience from YouTube, YouTube created youtube shorts to recompense the audience. The YouTube developers tried to push youtube shorts to have better earning opportunities, but TikTok was on the market for a while in short video. People get used to watching short videos from TikTok more than youtube short videos. On youtube shorts, it engages by looking for like, dislike, comment, and share, while reels and tiktok only look for like, share, and comment.
The effect from TikTok
Eventhough TikTok was created to entertain, you need to limit yourself from watching this. If you know that you are addicted to it and cannot limit yourself, you need to solve this problem as soon as possible. Some people ignore these problems because they think that this is not a big problem, but a lot of psychologists try to call out that addiction to TikTok is worse.For example of TikTok addiction symptoms are weaker working memory, lower attention span, obsessive behavior,stress and depression, anxiety, or etc. Though TikTok supports people to have self esteem,in contrast some people might compare oneself to others on TikTok and it can lead to low self esteem. Moreover, negative comments can also negatively affect mental health. It also impacts people around by spending too much time on TikTok can reduce your communication skill. This can happen to everyone, especially for young people, because they don’t have maturity and also cannot limit themselves. It is parents’ duty to take care of their children. There are several ways to help you from TikTok addiction. First, you need to limit screen time use, you will not use it more than you planned. Second, you have to find other activities apart from using a mobile phone. Third, while you are in the exam period, you have to delete TikTok from your mobile phone, it helps you to focus on your examination. It might be hard for the first and second day, but you will feel better after. Fourth, doing a social detox might help you, when you need time to reset your life. Every application is useful, if you use it in the right way and at the right time.
