Why TikTok is Addicting (It’s Not the Reason You Might Think)

The saddest part of my day is checking my phone’s daily screen time and seeing all the hours I spent on social media. This is a dreadful activity; however, I’ve noticed that my usage time for one specific app far exceeds any other–TikTok. This is probably a relatable experience for many TikTok users. But is this really a surprise? I mean, we all know how addictive TikTok is. You go on your phone intending to only scroll for a couple of minutes, and then you look up at your clock to notice that over an hour flew by! I’ve personally deleted the app multiple times to kill my craving, but it’s yet to work, and I continually find myself shamelessly downloading the app over and over again. 

There seems to be a collective understanding that this app has become addicting, and there are many reasons why this could be. For instance, the famous (or infamous) TikTok algorithm. Just like algorithms for other social media and video sharing sites, TikTok’s algorithm selects videos for your “For You” page that coincide with you using habits. This includes, but is not limited to, videos you’ve shared or watched in full, accounts you follow, and hashtags you interact with. This data is what allows the algorithm to cater a “For You” page with videos reflecting the user’s interests, and in turn make him or her stay on the app longer. Even the label of “For You” engenders a personal link between the user and the app. This concept differs from the “Explore” page on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These pages still use an algorithm for personalized content, but they lack the emotional connection that the term “For You” offers to users. Another aspect of TikTok that makes it addictive is the creative content that is found on the app. Besides, the algorithm is worthless without amazing videos for users to watch! TikTok is an app that anyone can get famous on, whether you’re an aspiring designer who has unique fashion tastes, or an amazing dad who wants to show the world how to become a great parent (@billyvsco you’re my hero). There are a multitude of reasons why TikTok blew up, but I chose to dissect a part of the app that many people tend to overlook: how the platform’s design layout makes for an optimal (addicting!) user experience.

TikTok, like other social media sites, runs on many quick, momentary spurts of entertainment. This is contrasted to a platform like YouTube, where users tend to only watch a handful of videos, but the length of the videos are many minutes long. Because the nature of TikTok is short, eye-grabbing content, this user attention is fragile–too many ads or bad recommended videos, and the user’s “entertainment high” can quickly end. However, I believe there’s another way that this user high can end: inconvenient icon placement and wasted screen space. 

By icons, I am referring to the like, comment, share, and profile buttons. On TikTok, these four icons are stacked on top of each other, all located on the right side of the screen. Additionally, they are all placed between the center and the bottom of the screen. This placement makes it the most accessible for the users to click these icons, assuming the users are right handed and use their thumb to scroll (which is presumably the majority of people). Why is this important? Well, this layout might only be saving the user microseconds of their time, but in an app that runs on quick spurts of attention, these fractions of a second hold significant weight. Compare this to Twitter’s mobile app, where the like, comment, and share icons are lined up horizontally across the middle of the screen. Obviously, Twitter is a very popular social media site and this layout does not significantly impact their number of users. However, I believe TikTok’s layout is not arbitrary and does play a key role in boosting its popularity. TikTok’s icon placement makes the user experiences more accessible, enjoyable, and addicting. 

Another unique aspect to this layout comes when you click the comment icon. Unlike other social media and video sharing apps, TikTok users can scroll through comments while the video still plays, including with sound, on a quarter of the screen. This might seem like an insignificant detail, but I would argue this is a crucial component to TikTok’s design. On other social media apps, such as Instagram, users cannot simultaneously comment on a post while looking at the picture or video. This leads to users having to make a critical decision: do I keep looking at the post or do I leave it to comment. TikTok is able to add convenience to this decision. Even though the user cannot see the video on the entire screen, the user still feels a sense of comfort knowing that he or she did not abandon a video to scroll through comments. This is a benefit that other platforms simply do not have. 

When you’re browsing social media on your phone, the screen you’re using is very small. As a result, every little inch of that screen is immensely important since any little distraction or element that takes away from the content at hand has the potential to drive the user away. Wasting screen space is a cardinal sin when it comes to keeping users in that “entertainment high,” and TikTok’s design layout adjusts for this phenomenon perfectly. A waste of screen space can be many things, but the main culprits are the caption and profile bars. For example, on many social media apps, such as Facebook and Instagram, the captions and profiles are separated from the photo, having its own “screen acreage.” This visible divide between each post adds unnecessary seconds of scrolling time, which could’ve been used to watch videos, read comments, share to friends, or engage in the content in many other ways. 

Even though this divide only adds fractions of a second to the user’s scrolling time, those microseconds add up, especially in an app that is driven by quick hits of entertainment (as previously mentioned with icon placement). However, TikTok does not have this issue. Both the caption and the profile are embedded into the video, which allows for the entire screen space to be filled with the main source of entertainment: the video. This results in videos being stacked on top of each other, which allows users to scroll immediately to the next video, without even a nanosecond to think “Maybe I’ve been watching for too long” or “Should I stop watching and do some homework?” Instead, TikTok brilliantly eliminated any distractions from the content, and as a result, that homework you should be doing never gets done. 

There are many aspects to TikTok that make the app addicting. Since the design is so subtle, we tend to ignore the platform’s layout as contributing to its popularity. However, I believe that TikTok’s design is a driving force behind its success. Other platforms have already been trying to replicate it, with Facebook's initial attempt being the app Lasso–which barely lasted two years–to it’s more recent attempt within Instagram being Instagram Reels. It’s safe to predict that many other platforms will soon look to model their layout off of TikTok as well. 

This new wave of social media and video sharing designs will not only make our user experience more addicting, but it also has significant implications for society as a whole. Innovations in new media technologies are causing these platforms to become integral parts of our lives. This dependency on digital technology has been expanding for years, and new shifts in addicting designs only make this process move faster. I believe that it’s imperative for us as users to be aware of this control that digital technology has on us. This is a challenging task to take on, especially when this technology is so ingrained in our society that it seems to hide away. However, it’s important that we continually reflect on our habits, tendencies, and vulnerabilities as new media consumers. If this awareness does not occur, there can potentially be more serious outcomes than just some homework not getting done.