Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3008664/how-chinese-video-app-tiktok-conquered-world
Post Magazine/ Long Reads

How Chinese video app TikTok conquered the world, making teens, and child safety, trend

  • With more than a billion downloads, the short-form video app owned by start-up ByteDance has captured the imagination of users across the globe.
  • So what makes TikTok tick?
A TikTok party in Tokyo in February. Picture: Shiho Fukada / Bloomberg

Most nights, from around seven till midnight, Sydney Jade is on TikTok, the smartphone app of the moment. The platinum blond teenager films herself singing show tunes, doing jumping jacks and joking around with store clerks at a Walmart not far from her home in Oklahoma, in the United States. Her short music videos and live streams are popular – Jade has 284,000 followers, some of whom periodically send her virtual gifts, such as 99 US cent (HK$7.80) puking-rainbow stickers.

Jade’s parents resisted TikTok at first. They hadn’t heard of the app and, Jade says, “didn’t like the idea of strangers watching me sing alone in front of the pink curtains in my bedroom”. But she convinced them that TikTok was “friendlier for kids than other apps like Facebook”. They let her join last year, just as, it seems, every other teenager signed on as well. In January, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the Android and iPhone stores, according to research firm Sensor Tower.