Clock winds down on future of TikTok

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2025 (251 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hey, remember MySpace?

I barely do, even though it was the defining social media site when I was in my early 20s.

We were out there deciding which friends would be included in our Top 8 (ruthless!) and posting music and taking duck-face selfies with our digital cameras. We were not making videos or writing skits or trying to go “viral.” We were just online with our friends.

And then one day I logged off and never logged back on.

As an elder millennial, I’ve been online since the beginning of social media and have lived through its many eras. ICQ. LiveJournal. MSN Messenger. Tumblr. Vine. Twitter before it was X. Oh my goodness, blogs — real, honest to goodness blogs.

And then, things changed. Facebook and Instagram entered the chat. Social media not only became a requirement for certain jobs, it became a job unto itself.

We started spending more time on these sites, which then became always-accessible apps on the computers that live in our pockets. We pivoted from text-based posts to pictures to short-form videos as TikTok exploded in popularity.

We weren’t just online with our friends anymore. We were online with everyone.

We’re at another interesting moment in time for social media. TikTok might get banned in the United States as soon as Sunday over concerns the app poses a risk to national security because it’s owned by a China-based company. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its ruling on a federal law requiring the company to sell the app or be banned.

Then there’s whatever it is that X is now. And Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — recently announced it would no longer be using fact checkers.

Which, I’m sorry, Meta had fact checkers?

I’m only being semi-facetious. Between the firehose of AI slop on Facebook these days and the rampant medical disinformation on Instagram — drop “BLOAT” in the comments so an athleisure-clad influencer with no qualifications whatsoever can send you a PDF about lowering your cortisol levels! — I’m struggling, as a user, to understand what “fact checking” was happening.

How did we, as a society, allow Facebook, a site designed to rank the hotness of women, to replace the news?

How did we, as a society, allow Facebook, a site designed to rank the hotness of women, to replace the news?

At any rate, as social media platforms cannibalize each other, are wielded as disinformation tools, become functionally unusable or are shut down entirely, people are questioning their value.

I’ve read many trend pieces about people posting less, about people going on social-media fasts, about people logging off certain sites forever.

That’s not possible for everyone — especially when it comes to TikTok.

People can be weirdly dismissive of an app that has been a major cultural driver — for better and for worse — over the past few years. In a few short years, “TikTok Creator” has become a viable way to make a living and the app has provided small businesses owners with tremendous reach.

TikTok has launched the careers of artists across disciplines, particularly actors and comedians. It was an early pandemic lifeline — so many viral moments from 2020 originated on TikTok — and has sparked both trends and important conversations. That’s why Instagram and so many other apps have tried so hard to emulate it.

To say it doesn’t matter is naive.

Social media has always been a Wild West, a product of the “move fast, break stuff” world of tech.

TikTok, like all social media, also has its problems. It’s incredibly addictive by design, thanks to a canny algorithm that constantly feeds you content. It’s a time-suck that has eroded attention spans and has made everyone talk the same.

Commenters can be unspeakably cruel. And it has influenced traditional media folks to run away with “trends” just as we had the tendency to blow up tweets to “everyone is talking about this” proportions.

Social media has always been a Wild West, a product of the “move fast, break stuff” world of tech.

“Social media, somebody once described it to me, it’s like building real estate on sand,” TikTok creator Joanne Molinaro told CNN.

Still, despite those constantly shifting sands, creativity tends to find a way. Musical acts used to become famous on MySpace; writers used to get book deals from blogs. There are still bands and books.

Social media cannot exist without users, and there are no users if there’s no content and there’s no content if there are no creators — whether that’s professionals or regular users posting about their daily lives.

When TikTok, X and Facebook go the way of the other fallen giants — and they will, even if it’s not tomorrow — something else will come along to take their place because something else always does.

And creative people will still be out there making things, including platforms themselves.

We just might have to work a little harder to see — and support — them.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com