In March 2020, the world came to a halt. Stores began to close, employees were told they would be working remotely and college students were being taken away from the place they finally began to call home. It was as if time had stopped and everything that was once deemed as normal, was now completely out of reach.
The pandemic served as an extremely stressful time for the entirety of the world, and yet few people talk about the deep effects it had on college students. For students locked inside, for what felt like the first time in forever, they had to find a way to escape the madness of the world. Many chose to turn to TikTok as a getaway from the harshness that COVID-19 brought along with it.
TikTok is a video format social media platform which allows users to post clips using trending sounds, dances, as well as come up with their own creative ways to interact with others. Tiktok first came about in 2016 through a Chinese company by the name of Bytedance. As of 2021, only five years after TikTok’s introduction into the world, the app has 1 billion annual users. Twitter, in comparison, an application that has been around since 2006, is noted to have 206 million active users.
Sofia Delicata, a sophomore nursing major at Quinnipiac University, immediately felt drawn to the app when quarantine first began.
“Social media was like the only thing to do during quarantine,” said Delicata. “It was either that or walking your dog. Personally, I was on TikTok at least 10 hours a day. I feel like there was no other choice but for the app to grow.”
Although Delicata was not on TikTok for exactly 10 hours a day, she mentioned that at times it almost felt that long. Delicata first downloaded TikTok in March of 2020 and since then has received over 800,000 likes and has over 18,000 followers. In the span of roughly six months, Delicata was able to build up an extensively loyal ‘fanbase,’ of users who enjoyed her “What I Eat in A Day” videos. These clips take users on a food journey with any specific TikToker about the kind of food they consume throughout the day. It gives other users ideas of things they can eat and offers an entertaining way to build a digital connection with someone. Since 2020, Delicata has reached over 740,000 views on those specific videos.
According to Statista, a statistics based website that does data research on over 80,000 topics, Delicata’s follower count, which currently stands at 18.3 thousand, along with her video views, classifies her as a micro-influencer. These kinds of influencers have a follower count ranging from 5,000-20,000 and receive an average of 1,900 views per video. Micro-influencers rank higher than nano-influencers, who have a follower count of 1,000-5,000, and receive about 700 views per TikTok.
“I feel like TikTok is almost a little game,” said Delicata. “You find a trend, you send it to your friend, they do it and so on. You find a funny video and you share it with others and then you just see it blow up. It kept things really entertaining for me in that way.”
Sydney Reynolds, a journalism graduate school student at Quinnipiac University, was also able to utilize TikTok to its fullest extent during the quarantine. Reynolds started off her TikTok career by posting Avatar content and was then able to form an online family. Two years since Reynolds’ entrance into TikTok, she has also been able to secure the ability to get paid for all the content she posts.
“I have a very interesting experience with TikTok just because I went viral during quarantine,” said Reynolds. “It really helped in bringing me closer with people. I was able to make a lot of friends in the Avatar community. I even had my profile picture be created by an artist that I found through TikTok. So, it wasn’t specifically with my friends from home that I got closer with, but I made a ton of new connections that I would not have found without TikTok.”
Reynolds is most notably known for her ‘favorite celebrity interview moment’ clip. In December 2020, TikTok released a stitch feature on their videos, which allowed people to respond with video clip answers to other users’ questions. Reynolds saw the opportunity within this new feature, along with another TikToker, who had asked users “What’s a moment that lives in your head rent free?” and the two were able to utilize the stitch feature to its fullest effect. Reynolds’ iconic clip received over nine million views, over one million likes and was shared over 25,000 times. She was also reposted by stars like Joe Jonas and even got DM’d by Chipotle.
“The celebrity interview moment video is definitely the one that started my TikTok career,” said Reynolds. “It was right when the stitch feature got started and it made me excited that now I could ask a question and people could answer. I would say that I just really jumped on a trend, especially at a time where people did not know how big a question video could get. Also, I think the video gave people an open platform and a way to participate with others on what their favorite celebrity interview moment was. It was just a way for people to talk about something enjoyable with one another especially during the pandemic.”
Not only did TikTok provide entertainment value for college students amid the pandemic, but in some cases even served as an educational tool.
Reynolds is just one of many college students on the Quinnipiac campus that was able to gain a form of community and support from TikTok. Many students felt that TikTok served as the only escape during quarantine.
TikTok’s massive growth can easily be seen in the numbers it has reached since 2020. According to Investopedia, a financial based website that simplifies monetary information about companies, TikTok was worth up to $50 billion in the middle of 2020 and has now grown to be available in over 150 markets and 75 languages. Over 65% of the users on TikTok are between the ages of 13-24. To put these numbers into perspective, Twitter was worth $43.6 billion in 2020 and was already a company that had been around since 2006. TikTok was able to reach these record high numbers in a much shorter period of time due to the want that so many people had for it. Additionally, according to Statista, during the years of 2019-2021, TikTok saw a 38% increase of monthly active users worldwide, jumping from 381 million to 1 billion, in comparison to Facebook which had an increase of 19%, with a total of 2.9 billion users.
This rapid growth for a social media app came as a shock for many people, specifically those tracking the numbers on the daily. Ryan Young, a customer success analyst at Comscore, a media measurement and analytics company that provides marketing data to brands and organizations, never thought he would see downloads and views for an app increase so quickly.
“A big part of my job entails pulling in data from social media platforms and giving those numbers to our clients,” said Young. “I began working towards the middle of quarantine and just seeing the numbers that TikTok influencers were pulling in was mind blowing. You would see a clip on a Monday morning for someone just at the beginning of their TikTok career at about 15,000 views and then I’d check again the next day and that number would be tripled. People were getting insane views on TikTok in just days, whereas that would take months to reach on another app and at another time.”
As college students continued to build up these online communities and connections throughout quarantine, many professors saw the changes that the app was beginning to bring to the classroom. Kelly Gaggin, a public relations professor at Syracuse University, addressed how the app found its way onto college campuses after quarantine.
“I think if you are not using TikTok in the classroom already that you’re behind,” said Gaggin. “If you’re working in the communications field or broadcasting and not utilizing TikTok, then you are already behind. Personally, I’ve seen that once I get talking about TikTok that the students really begin participating with me. A number of my examples that I have used about the digital space have come from TikTok because it was just so amazing seeing that video, audio, and text component all bundled into one.”
Gaggin noted that she also witnessed the positive ways that TikTok helped connect college students during such an unpredictable time.
“I think it really did help connect students and I would say that started six-seven months in, when people were joining others in those trends,” said Gaggin. “Yes, those trends are fun and we get to laugh or hear a new sound, but at the end of the day it was actually bringing people together in activities, even if they weren’t consciously thinking about it. For example, trying out that dance that went viral and noticing that it was trending and that two million other people were doing it right with you. I think that was a huge way to bring people together.”
Quarantine will always serve as a prominent memory for college students for the rest of their lives. A lot of the reason behind this is due to the mental health effects that this situation had for students. Erica Gelven, a psychology professor at Quinnipiac, mentioned the ways quarantine played a role in the mental health of students.
Gelven also addressed the ways she witnessed social media and specifically TikTok help college students through the quarantine.
“I think there were times in the pandemic where social media was the only lifeline,” said Gelven. “Things like TikTok, there was a time where it was really valuable because it was people’s only connection to life outside their little bubble.”
Although it seems relatively impossible at times, there was a point in life before the pandemic and there will be a point after. However it is critical to look back on the major applications that got us through such a confusing time. TikTok was a turning point during quarantine and its continued growth is proof of the ongoing effect it has on college students.
“I’m definitely going to continue using it for a while and I think a lot of college students will as well,” said Reynolds. “It just continues to be such a community-based platform and is a really great outlet for people.”