Comment by screye 4 days ago
Teens are rebellious & want to be far away from parents.
It disqualifies mainstream apps like Twitter, Reddit, BlueSky, Reels & now Snapchat as well. This leaves Tiktok and now international apps like Xiaohongshu as the obvious alternatives.
The more the US govt. forces youths to use American mega-corps, the less they want to use it.
It’s not why they use TikTok but it’s why they don’t use other social media apps. Once an app becomes too popular with older people the quality and vibes decrease, plus everyone feels awkward about posting.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about outside of generational gaps, new social media apps are fun because you add all the people you’re comfortable with. After some years you now have a ton of connections from past stages of life, and start feeling restricted again in your personal expression.
Plus there’s the dual use issue – IG is too commonly shared now so I have current and former coworkers there plus everyone I’ve ever been interested in as friends or more at a party. So it’s not the place I’d want to feel free and creative.
IG tries to solve some of this with Close Friends and other lists but people don’t really want to spend their time constantly organizing a list of friends.
> IG tries to solve some of this with Close Friends and other lists but people don’t really want to spend their time constantly organizing a list of friends.
Agreed. IG's UI for this is horrible.
I really liked Google+'s "Circles" feature back in the day that let you drag and drop people into different groups really easily and 'assign' posts/content to those circles.
Exactly, Instagram started as a way for me to interact with my social circle. Show people I personally know what is going on in my life and see what is going on in their life. Instagram later on has slowly tried evolving into something else, but mentally I still view it as a place to share with people in my life. On the other hand, Tiktok is a both a global community and a small niche of people who share the same interests as you where you can make memes, enjoy the same content together, converse and witness trends and ideas in real time
> It’s not why they use TikTok but it’s why they don’t use other social media apps. Once an app becomes too popular with older people the quality and vibes decrease, plus everyone feels awkward about posting.
What is the point about the "best algo in town" if the universally popular app can not curate each person's feed differently?
Maybe it is because old people can comment on young people's posts and vice versa?
> So it’s not the place I’d want to feel free and creative.
Alternative account, "Private Friends" list?
Also, Bluesky is in no way mainstream. It's a niche platform used by a handful of terminally online people who really hate Elon. Most Twitter users who aren't hung up on ideology are still there.
Discord is more of a small-group or individual communication platform. I don't think it's suited as well for the one-to-many or feed-based appeals of social media such as TikTok. (Large, public Discord servers absolutely exist, but they're often themed around something specific; and even if they weren't, you can't just have an algorithm determine which messages in a channel you do or don't see.)
I don't think rebellion has anything to do with why kids use Tiktok. Nor do I think the US has any interest in forcing kids to use social media...