Blog #6

     The concept of the Diffusion Theory is how new communications technologies’ market share grows and shrinks based on popularization over time. The theory breaks the market share curve into 5 distinct segments to categorize people who use the new technology based on when they started compared to the size of the market share. The graph makes it a lot easier to understand. The “new” technology I will be reviewing is a very small and unknown app called TikTok.I’m choosing to review TikTok because I do not have the app. 



TikTok launched in 2016 and was developed by a Chinese company called ByteDance. Most of its early users or “adopters” were in china. TikTok had its first user spike in late 2017 when it acquired a rival platform called Musical.ly. When Musical.ly was acquired it had over 200 million users and just under 50% of its app usage came from the US, all of which were transferred over to TikTok. Having adopted all of Musical.ly’s American influencers, the platform continued to grow as new “early majority” users flooded in. TikTok had its largest growth in global users in 2020 when Covid-19 sent the world into quarantine. With many countries calling for lockdowns people had more free time than ever. People turned to TikTok to kill time whether it be as regular viewers or by starting their own channel and posting videos themselves. New users established themselves as major influencers and attracted “late adopters”. Then there are people such as myself who still haven't used the app or potentially never will. Personally, I choose not to download it because I know I will end up spending all of my time there and I will never get any work done. 


Although TikTok helped the world get past Covid-19 I don’t think the app is all good. Similar to all other forms of social media, it is designed to make you spend more time on the app so that you watch more ads. All while recording your information to make its addiction algorithm more effective. I don’t remember where I saw/heard it but I remember hearing that when asked what their dream job was, the largest response from 12-16 year old girls was that they wanted to be social media influencers. I applaud them for their ambition but with goals that difficult to reach, I’d hate to see its impact on their mental health. All in all, I think TikTok is a good platform that helps users spread whatever message it is that they are trying to send. However, I am concerned about how it is impacting younger generations. 

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