When the pandemic and subsequent lockdown hit, many of us fled to, of all places, TikTok. TikTok’s popularity rose more than any other platform, with its usage increasing by a staggering 41% in 2020. While a flight to social media in these circumstances is expected, one wonders what it is about TikTok that filled a void in people that other platforms could not.
The pandemic and TikTok mirror each other in many ways — most notably in how they changed our concept of time. Pandemic-time was somehow both an overabundance of time, in finding that we had too much of it with a sudden need to fill all that extra time, as well as an absence of it, in how the days and weeks started to blend together and conceiving of a future beyond these conditions became difficult. I find TikTok-time spirals in a way that other platforms do not. The endless scroll of social media is amplified; videos encompass the entirety of your screen — greedy for space — and it’s difficult to lose attention in the span of 15-60 seconds (now up to three minutes). Coupled with its algorithmically curated “For You” page, the type of content you are exposed to oscillates constantly; you never see too much of one thing, but everything you see has been tailored to meet your specific interests and habits, influenced by what will grab your attention the most.
The pandemic and TikTok mirror each other in many ways — most notably in how they changed our concept of time.
Despite the addictive quality of the app, I want to refrain from reducing TikTok to a technological black hole that sucks at our time and identities because when we are engaging in social media’s infinite scroll, what we are actually looking for is some kind of connection. When we come face to face with another person on our screen, it’s easy to feel like our phones are just windows where we encounter others similarly reaching out for connection. The lockdown altered not just our sense of time, but also our sense of place. Displaced from the outside world and permanently relocated to our homes, we understandably sought out community in the places we had available to us and social media became a middle ground for all of us to meet.
Social media’s new function as a virtual watering hole might best be explored through Ray Oldenburg’s concept of “third places.” Oldenburg is a sociologist who delves into the problem of place in his book The Great Good Place by identifying three realms of experience: first places being domestic spaces — the home, second places being spaces dedicated to productivity and employment — the workplace, and third places are those spaces that serve a social and communal purpose. Third places start to take on an enigmatic quality when you try to pin down what exactly makes them pillars and builders of community, but Oldenburg tries to establish a few key characteristics.
Social media’s new function as a virtual watering hole might best be explored through Ray Oldenburg’s concept of “third places.”
Third places are neutral; they are leveling grounds in that there is no explicit advantage or obligation to be there. Conversation is meant to be the primary activity at these places — and not just conversation with those you already know. Third places are settings where everyone is fair game for conversation. In fact, striking one up with strangers is encouraged and expected. Cafes, bars, beauty parlors, general stores and churches might all have served as prime examples of third places at one point in time.
Oldenburg proposes third places as the solution to an increasing trend toward isolation and alienation in America (1989 at the time he was writing this book) and remarks that we “come dangerously close to the notion that one ‘gets sick’ in the world beyond one’s domicile, and one ‘gets well’ by retreating from it.” Third places were in jeopardy long before COVID-19, but a pandemic certainly exacerbated things — leaving us with a desire for community and no places to commune.
Whether or not TikTok is the “best” space to fulfill that desire is up for debate, but it’s impossible to deny that communities are formed here, and its algorithmic-centered curation increases the likelihood of encountering creators and users with whom you share interests, beliefs and behaviors. Just as endless as the feed are examples of users coming together to help one another, purposefully sharing and engaging in content to increase its visibility and chances of reaching a wider audience who can help or donate.
Whether or not TikTok is the “best” space to fulfill that desire is up for debate, but it’s impossible to deny that communities are formed here, and its algorithmic-centered curation increases the likelihood of encountering creators and users with whom you share interests, beliefs and behaviors.
While other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have struggled to keep hold of users and engagement, TikTok has continued to grow steadily. More than any other app, it has become a “place” we could escape to while confined to our homes and echoed the many ways we are drawn to third places. TikTok might mimic the spontaneity of meeting a stranger or the serendipity of finding common ground with another person, and it may have even served as an anchor in community life during the pandemic, but third places hinge on this element of place, and TikTok would be more fairly considered a “nonplace.”
The trouble with TikTok as the primary means of meeting this need for community and connection is that it becomes yet another mode of dislocating ourselves. There is a tendency to characterize third places as being an escape from the other two places of home and work, but it’s a comparison that doesn’t do justice to how a third place adds to our lives. More profoundly, a third place becomes a space that provides relief, play and joy. How do we locate ourselves and one another? The infinite scroll that TikTok promises can start to resemble a morphine drip that we escape into in order to numb ourselves — and while we may be seeking relief when we do so, I’m not sure that relief is what it actually provides.
