HN Explorer

TikTok Fatigue?

16 points by factorialboy ↗ HN
Are younger folks done with TikTok?

My sample size is not huge, but from what I have observed, the hype isn't the same as it was in 2020/2021.

The platform might have become too commercial as well and the "cool kids" moved on.

Or am I completely mistaken?

17 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 47.2 ms ] thread
[dead] nathanaldensr
ChrisClark
Yeah, we don't discuss popular businesses or do any market analysis here on Y Combinator.
rchaud
We do, but they usually stem from an article, or a more detailed OP with some stats maybe.
davidbarker
I think your comment goes against the HN guidelines.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals...

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dandellion
If someone finds the guidelines a bit stringent I recommend trying reddit, which is a bit more lax with comments.
ellieh
I think this happens with every social network. There's lots of hype with younger people, and it's the "cool new thing". Then the parents, companies, and other things move in and it's suddenly a lot less fun.
travisporter
I wonder how snapchat is doing with gen z
DANK_YACHT
I think Snapchat is popular with Gen Z as a communication mechanism. It's one of the only delete-by-default social networks out there, which kids, having grown up in the age of digital surveillance, find important. The issue facing Snapchat is that it's hard to profit off of a messaging service, and their content business has largely been eating by TikTok.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
rvz
The digital crack / cocaine has already worn off of these addicts? That is quite a surprise if true. Maybe the pandemic fuelled and accelerated these sort of behaviour and now that the pandemic is over, it is now not 'cool' anymore? Oh dear.

Like Facebook, they will eventually get bored, grow out of it and move on as many company accounts, larger influencers and even the ByteDance themselves continue to manipulate the content and the algorithm to only just ruin the platform for the users as I said before [0].

Perhaps the 'cool kids' are already now in the process of finding the next hit to get addicted to.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30191468

__ryan__
This post is frustrating because you aren’t really saying anything.

  My sample size is not huge, but from what I have observed, the hype isn't the same as it was in 2020/2021.
Your sample size for what? How do you measure hype?
smotched
"My 12 year old said tiktok sucks...is tiktok is dead"
cableshaft
Just judging by the data for April 2022 here, it looks pretty darn popular still. And younger people (the demographic of "the cool kids") are still its primary users:

"Monthly Active Users – TikTok officially has over 1 billion monthly active users. For reference – active users of other social platforms: Facebook – 2.9B, YouTube – 2.2B, Instagram – 1.4B, TikTok – 1.0B, Snapchat – 500M, Pinterest – 480M, Twitter – 397M."

"As we mentioned, we estimate that TikTok has about 80 million monthly active users in the United States. 60% are female, 40% are male. 60% are between the ages of 16-24. 26% are between the ages 25-44. 80% are between the ages 16-34. This data comes straight from TikTok."

"Engagement – it’s hard to quantify this. But the engagement on TikTok is incredible. Case in point: Jennifer Lopez recently posted the same video on Twitter and TikTok. She has 45 million followers on Twitter and 5 million followers on TikTok. The video on Twitter got 2 million views (off 45 million followers). The video on TikTok got 71 million views (off 5 million followers)."

"TikTok screen time per user is crushing its competitors – it’s currently at 26 hours per month."

https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistic...

If it seems like it dropped at all, it may have dropped a bit (as well as other social media apps) as people are going out and interacting more in person than when the pandemic started a couple of years ago. All social media apps likely got a big boost in traffic in 2020 from people not being able to interact with their friends in person.

Where are these people going if they're leaving TikTok? As far as I know there isn't any other alternative besides TikTok that has any traction yet. And I highly doubt they're coming back to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter anytime soon.

msoad
if this is true we're entering a faster hype cycle for social media platform.

I wonder if it is because of the nature of TikTok vs. Instagram where you don't see your friends in TikTok for the most part but Instagram has both your friends posts and popular/viral contents

ironlake
I don't believe younger folks are at all done with TikTok.

I don't believe TikTok is a social network only for younger people. Younger people my drive adoption on certain platforms, but other platforms like Etsy, Goodreads, and Pinterest were not dependent on teenager adoption. And TikTok has grown way past the teens-only set.

There aren't a lot of examples of widely adopted social networks that stopped existing. Everything stops growing. Facebook is one of the most profitable companies in the world, but their user growth is laughable compared to TikTok and not cool with the cool kids.

hammyhavoc
Never got started with it. Made an account, decided right there it wasn't for me.