Its logo is a musical note. During the first confinement, during the Covid-19 pandemic where it exploded in the eyes of the world, this festive app was often presented as a kaleidoscope where dance is king. But TikTok is now playing it smart and wants to recommend books to you. In his latest advertising campaign broadcast throughout France, “A window on the world”, a man breaks his daily routine by consulting videos collected under the hashtag #BookTok. We hear the warm voice of Mr. Public Service Literature, Augustin Trapenard, recommending this or that book. Valentine Tedo, alias @Entouteslettres, is one of the prominent personalities of this book club whose content has accumulated more than 100 billion views across the planet. “TikTok, I had a bad image of it originally, she concedes. Today, I like to highlight forgotten writers and poets like Renée Vivien or Anna de Noailles.” The platform even plastered his face on 4×3 posters.
#BookTok has become the showcase, some would say the alibi, of the social network created in China by the company ByteDance, in 2016, under the name Douyin. The app, which has 1.7 billion users to date, including more than 15 million in France, has been criticizing for several weeks for its links with its country of origin and its content deemed demeaning. It is now banned on the phones of French officials, as in many countries, for national security reasons.
However, the majority of its audience is under 25, and nearly 30% are between 13 and 17 years old. Its users spend an hour and a half a day on average, a record. The promotion of the book, symbol of disconnection in front of the screens, sounds like a response a little too calibrated to be perfectly honest. It nevertheless opens up the network to new, older creators, like Valentine, 28 Printemps.
On TikTok, everything is sought, everything is found
Its popularity, TikTok owes it more to its back office and its famous “For you” page, where the content scrolls endlessly. The funny ones: from pieces from the last season of LOL to the facial expressions of Khaby Lame (record holder of subscribers, more than 150 million). Where the girly : the #BeautyTok community is one of the strongest on the network. “I love the content of Filippa Moulier, a Swedish woman who stages her daily life, her beauty tips, her meals”, says Eloïse, in her twenties, three hours of daily TikTok assumed. For David, 19, and his cousins, TikTok is more of a Swiss army knife. One finds cooking recipes there – his passion -, the other videos that will help him for his hairdressing CAP, the third has taken up the guitar again, with lessons that he finally follows at his own pace.
Everything is sought, everything is found. According a recent study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, 41% of young people already use TikTok as if they were using the Google search engine. “TikTok, concludes David, it’s the perfect synthesis: TV, videos, Pinterest, YouTube… It’s phew!” It’s above all “fun”, sums up Marie, 13, “as opposed to Instagram where you take care of your image, or Snap on which you tell your life story”. Posting there is, moreover, very simple. “The platform is intuitive. If it had been more complicated, I would probably have given up,” says Valentine Tedo. “TikTok has become a prescriber at breakneck speed: we see more and more, in bookstores, shelves grouping books recommended on the application”, notes journalist Océane Herrero, author of the book. The TikTok System. How the Chinese platform is shaping our lives (Ed. du Rocher). The recent success of the novel captive, by Sarah Rivens, which has sold 180,000 copies since August, owes him a lot.
Inevitably, TikTok is caught up in the news. The French presidential election has accumulated a billion views. Like the videos of the paramilitary group Wagner, kings of disinformation, according to a NewsGuard report. The app makes this incongruous shuffling possible thanks to its recommendation algorithm, an aggregate of mathematical formulas that decide which videos to push to the user. This acts as an investigator who stacks the clues. User engagement is quantified through its likes, comments, subscriptions, time spent on each video according to their themes. So much information which is then crossed with the status of the tiktokeur: boy or girl, age, location… In general, teenagers are aware of being dissected from every angle. “If I like a lot of videos of the same genre, I will have others”, explains shyly Chloé, almost 13 years old, barely the legal age to register. Creators share best practices to get more views. “Many influencers will, for example, think about the best catchphrase to capture their audience,” says @MonsieurThomas, holder of an account connected to the street food.
Stop the “doomscrolling”
If the algorithm of a social network is like the sauce of the restaurant Le Relais de l’entrecôte – a well-kept secret -, we can nevertheless understand why young people particularly appreciate it. “It trains much faster than its direct competitors like YouTube, because the videos, which are very short, multiply the viewing data collected every hour”, deciphers Guillaume Chaslot, founder of the organization AlgoTransparency.
This ultra-sharp knowledge of users creates a virtuous circle for TikTok. The app pushes more proper videos, drives more engagements, and sells highly qualified ad space to brands. Its revenue from advertising, which represents more than 11 billion dollars, exploded in 2022. Companies also pay content creators to broadcast their messages and avoid any lawsuits for “meaningfulness”. TikTok stimulates this small world with a well-endowed creation fund, whose prices change according to popularity: from 0.01 cent for 1,000 views to more than one euro. @MonsieurThomas, with 1.5 million subscribers, earns around 40 cents for every 1,000 views on his videos. On the other hand, those of less than a minute, which nevertheless make the salt of TikTok, are not monetizable.
The perverse effects of this beautiful machine, as in any free social network, are borne by the user. At TikTok, the intensive practice of “doomscrolling” – the fact of scrolling with your thumb down without limit – arouses many fears, which are added to those already observed in the Meta galaxy. “Back when Facebook was popular with teens, their newsfeed consisted of text or photos. This content was less visually stimulating than today’s TikTok videos, which are designed to lock teens into reward circuits” , believes Mathieu Revranche, author of a thesis on mental health in young people. The application is designed to make its fans as captive “and as passive as possible”, notes Dominique Boullier, university professor, specialist in the uses of digital and cognitive technologies. To counter criticism, the company announced in early March a host of safeguards including a warning to those under 18 who would exceed sixty minutes of daily viewing. Real or imagined, these addictive behaviors remain largely unknown for the time being: no serious scientific study has come to shed light on their harmfulness.
The cult of authenticity
That’s the whole TikTok paradox. The app is ubiquitous in the lives of teenagers. But its effects remain unclear. “The explosion of TikTok over the past three years has taken the scientific community by surprise, admits Alexandra Masciantonio, author of a thesis on the specificities of social networking sites and their effects on subjective well-being. Very little research has been carried out on the application.” Only empirical findings allow us to understand the impact on young people. In order not to be isolated in the playground, it is essential to participate in the great social gathering that has become TikTok. Not understanding its codes, knowing its filters and missing the “ref” (the reference) of the day is to risk exclusion. But registration is a double-edged sword: once TikTok is downloaded, do you still have to publish? The application exploits both the passions and the weaknesses of a generation. “I prefer to avoid: some people in my class who post videos are made fun of, relates Hugo, 15. I don’t want to be harassed.” TikTok therefore has its face immersed: millions of videos shared “in private”, outside the “For you” thread.
Even when the gaze of others is benevolent, this emphasis can be a vector of discomfort. “Adolescence is the period of life when you develop your self-presentation by comparing yourself to your peers, and beyond,” notes Matthieu Danias-Uraga, doctoral student specializing in identity development and digital uses among young people. youth. Again, TikTok is blurring the tracks. “The application does not promote one ideal of beauty, but several. These are all requirements that must be met”, remarks Océane Herrero.
TikTok users are no longer just bombarded with the latest fashionable clothes or accessories. Of “buccal fat removal” (a cosmetic surgery operation intended to slim the face) at the brazilian buttlift (which is used to increase the volume of the buttocks), bodies and faces are also subject to trends. Even if they are not completely fooled, teenagers struggle to ignore the aesthetic advice of tiktokeurs, perceived as “trusted” figures. “Unlike Instagram, TikTok is a platform seen as authentic, continues Océane Herrero. The user feels that influencers are close to him.” It remains for the parents to remind their flock that they have neither the same schedule nor the same bank account as the model Bella Hadid. Well aware of this requirement for authenticity at the heart of the platform, the top model with 8.1 million subscribers has opted for a very sober slogan by way of description: “The real her” (“the real her”). Here, everything is true, promise sworn.