In a world full of social media platforms and the internet it is hard to avoid keeping your lives private and off the internet. With this newly trending app TikTok, privacy and data sharing has become a recent issue of debate.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a giant in the Chinese tech industry. Users can shoot, edit and share videos up to 60 seconds in length. These videos can be embellished with music, filters, templates and animations. You can like, comment and share other users’ content, and even follow their profiles just like other social media platforms that are popular now. Unique to TikTok is the ability to view a variety of content. You can also specialize the content on your "for you page" based on what you most frequently like and interact with. People can most closely relate TikTok to the app Vine. Often called the "lip-syncing app" TikTok is used by tons of celebrities and people mainly from India, China and the United States. the average TikTok user is on the app for 52 minutes a day.
The app has raised privacy concerns as it has become more widely popular. Currently, TikTok requires users to be 13 years of age or older in order to create an account. But, like most age restrictions on apps and websites, it can’t really be enforced. There has been concern of adults targeting younger girls and uncovering information such as their name, school and age. A spokesman for TikTok sad that they have protective measures in place, such as privacy settings, keyword filters and a system to remove content deemed inappropriate. However, several users get their most popular videos taken down for immature content purposes and then just repost them.
There are other concerns about the app, especially in regards to privacy. On Feb. 27, 2019, ByteDance agreed to pay the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a $5.7 million settlement in response to the rumor that the app has been illegally collecting the private information of child users of the app.
For concerned parents, step-by-step guides on how to enable privacy settings on the app have been created. A user can set their profile to private and limit who can comment on a user’s posts. Users are also able to watch videos without ever creating an account.
However, TikTok does bring more to the table than any other social media platform currently. I have just recently joined the app, however I love the cooking videos, music recommendations, step-by-step crafting ideas, and humorous content related to college students. Recently a teacher of mine asked a discussion question about if Berry should create a TikTok account. After little thought I decided this could be a great resource for the school to promote in order to stay up-to-date with the latest media trends. As someone who works social media pages for the school I think it is a great way to keep people interacting, especially in times like these.
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics
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