TikTok Mobile App Review

Hey Everyone, 

During my frequent use of some social media apps, I decided that I wanted to dive into a review of the popular TikTok app. The TikTok app is a video-sharing platform where most users upload short videos that can be commented on, liked, shared with friends, or saved into a user's favorites. This app contains a wide variety of different kinds of videos that can range from comedy to infotainment and news. This media platform allows users to create and upload videos of their liking and can include filters, tags in the descriptions, and music or sound bites. In order to complete a proper review, I wanted to dissect the usability, design, and function of this app overall in order to determine whether or not there was any room for improvements that could be made to this app.

Usability: TikTok is an extremely easy mobile app to use as app users can create a free account or continue as a guest to start watching these short videos. Once on the app, users can simply begin scrolling through the videos on their "For You" page and skip past videos that they are not interested in. Videos found on signed-in user accounts are much more generated for them based on their video topic preferences, whereas a guest login will typically generate popular videos onto the "For You" page. The likes, comments, share option, and saved areas of a video are on the right side of the screen for easy access and the music or sound bite is underneath at the bottom portion of the video for when users may want to save the sound or find similar videos using the same sound. This mobile app is incredibly easy to navigate as most function abilities can be found close together on top of a video. The option to follow a user's account is also found on this overlay, along with video descriptions, the user's name, and more. The app is so easy to use that addiction is pretty commonly found with this app. The mindless scrolling can often lead to increased time usage and decreased memory circuits (Petrillo, 2021). TikTok has since released videos to appear on user's timelines when the app detects long continuous usage in one day meant to encourage users to take a break from the app.

Design: The design of TikTok is overall very impressive as the concept is simple yet effective. The simple scroll option allows the user to move on from video to video as they please and users can easily navigate through the main functions. If an account was made, the ability to change account statuses to private, filter out keywords, and block other user's accounts are super easy to find on your profile. Additionally, saved videos in a user's favorite can be easily found and made private, and folders can be created in a user's favorites for a simple way to group similar videos together. For example, home improvement videos can be saved into one folder and funny videos can be saved in another. TikTok often keeps color layouts basic as most videos are already made in color and could distract away from the functions. 

Function: The functions of TikTok are essentially endless with the basic components of liking, commenting, sharing, or saving specific videos being right on top of each video. Direct messaging is another basic function that can be done through this app along with the ability to follow friends, family, and preferred users. Though, TikTok has begun expanding the capabilities of this mobile app and has now made online shopping possible through the app. Users can create and upload videos that are eligible for commission if they promote products that can be bought through the TikTok shop. Additionally, users can earn money on this mobile app by live-streaming videos and receiving "gifts" from their viewers. Gifting options are available for all users where they can buy animated emoji-like things for real money and gift to the live streamer. This can then be cashed in for real currency. Other functionalities of this mobile app include switching from the "For You" page to a "STEM" page which changes the type of videos that will appear on your feed. The STEM feed consists of science, medical, geographical, etc. related videos so that users can watch educational videos instead. 

Recommendations:

1. The security of user's data within this mobile app has been alarming some users about their privacy. This mobile app has been reported to allegedly share user's data more than any other social media app, with no clear indication of where users' data is being sent (Huddleston, 2022). My recommendation is for TikTok to start taking security measures much more seriously and offering more privacy settings to allow user's data to be more contained to the app itself. 

2. Auto scrolling is also something that has been requested since TikTok first began to become popular as most users seem to want videos to scroll on their own. Auto-scrolling options would allow the user to continue doing household chores, getting ready, or just laying in bed without having to fixate on moving on to the next video. Though I do believe that this improvement could lead to worsened attention spans, I do agree that this improvement could also be useful for those struggling with disabilities. 

3. The last recommendation I have is for TikTok to include hazardous or trigger warnings for videos with potentially dangerous and unhealthy video tags. TikTok challenges have become super popular on this app, but some of the challenges can be extremely dangerous and TikTok should encourage users to be aware of the danger that could result from attempting these challenges when a video is posted. Some of the most dangerous TikTok challenges that have become popular are the Benadryl challenge (which has resulted in deaths), the Borg challenge (which has led to alcohol poisoning cases), and the penny challenge(which has led to several reported house fires). On these video challenges, a basic warning alerting the viewer of the dangers associated with the challenge could be life-saving. 

References: 

Huddleston, T., Jr. (2022, February 22). TikTok shares your data more than any other social media app — and it’s unclear where it goes, study says. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/tiktok-shares-your-data-more-than-any-other-social-media-app-study.htmlLinks to an external site. 

Petrillo, S. (2021, December 13). What makes TikTok so addictive?: an analysis of the mechanisms underlying the world’s latest social media craze. Brown Undergraduate Journal of Public Health. https://sites.brown.edu/publichealthjournal/2021/12/13/tiktok/Links to an external site.