Check almost any teenagers’ smartphone and you’ll find the app ”TikTok.” It appears to be taking over the social media world and even though the amount of new users has slowed there has been upwards of 500 million users active in one month. 

TikTok is essentially a social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. It was originally called Musical.ly and was rebranded after being purchased by the chinese company ByteDance in November of 2017. Now people from your average teens to companies like the Washington Post are using it. Even the Coyote Chronicle has its own TikTok which you can go follow at @thecoyotechronicle.

The app has taken over the world and the lives of every teenager. You are extremely likely to find the app on kid’s phones even if they don’t actively use it. Those who do spend time on the app can find themselves using it for longer periods of time and far more than they intended to.

“It ended up, like I’ll go on there for two minutes then I look at the clock and its two hours later” sophomore Kayla Nazario said. 

The original intent of Tik Tok was just to create short funny or interesting videos but many influencers have used the app and started popular trends that end up becoming a fad in teen culture. Some would argue it’s a modern day version of Vines. 

“People behave because of what they see… they spend so much time looking at people they want to see in videos and that’s how things really start to spread nowadays” sophomore, Zoey Carlini said.

Although Tik Tok’s growth has slowed it’s still gaining thousands of new users every day in part due to a broader age range of people downloading Tik Tok. The app was the third most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2019, with 188 million new users. For a year over year comparison, it has grown by 70 percent from Q1 2018.

“Even adults use it” says Sophomore Gracie Gillespie, “My grandparents use it now, it’s no longer just for teens.”

Many say Tik Tok has already reached its peak but others like Senior Jorge Arriano say that they see it “ spreading and becoming even more popular” and already calls it a“global phenomenon.”

Whether Tik Tok continues to grow or not the platform is still one of the most used and downloaded applications at the moment and most don’t see it’s gain in popularity slowing down any time soon due to it just being so ”enjoyable for a lot of people” as Arriano says, and people can express themselves in anyway because “content can be made about anything”.