Blog Post #7

 Diffusion of Innovations

Conversion of TikTok

 Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that explains how and why new technologies or ideas spread. Taking the example of the social media app, TikTok. How was it first started? Why did it become so popular? Why are there early adopters and late adopters to the app? The app TikTok first started out as an app called "Musical.ly", which was a social media platform that consisted of mainly music, lip-syncing and dance videos. After the app was merged together and sold to different owners, the app, now known "TikTok", has become very popular, especially in our world today. The reason why TikTok became so popular nowadays, has a lot to do with the early adopters, the ones who used a specific technology as soon as it came out. 

Early Adopters

The early adopters of TikTok consists of previous Musical.ly users and people that have had the app during the first few years that it had been released as TikTok. The year of the COVID pandemic was also when TikTok was very popular because almost everyone was on the platform due to being isolated in the house for a good amount of time. All of the early adopters and early majority allow such trends to happen, which then brings the popularity of the app. Seeing all these new trends happening allowed TikTok to draw in more users to their platform, which a lot of these new users are known as the late adopters. The late adopters download TikTok a lot later, mainly after it reached popularity. 

Late Adopters

    Some people are classified as late adopters because they hop on the trends late, more specifically, they get on the trend after it's reached popularity. Some people will download TikTok a lot later because they either don't want to miss out on the latest trends, and these people can be classified as people who experience FOMO --- fear of missing out, or they download it because everyone else has it. But there are people who have never downloaded TikTok and those people are not adopters at all because they don't care too much about being "trendy". People are also well aware that TikTok makes you spend so much time on your screens. According to Exploding Topics, the average time spent on TikTok for users is 58 minutes and 24 seconds. Although most usually spend an hour on TikTok, there are people who spend even longer on TikTok. 

Drawbacks of TikTok

 Although TikTok has been so successful ever since it took over Musical.ly, there are downsides to the social media app. One obvious negatives to TikTok is the concern of privacy and data security as they track our location, history browser, and device information. The "For You" page on TikTok is a great example of how well TikTok tracks our information, whether we're on the app or off. For example, I was looking up concert tickets on Safari for this concert I really wanted to go to, and as soon as I went on TikTok, I got advertisements and videos of concert tickets. One of the advertisements I got was on the concert that I really wanted to go to. This shows us how well TikTok tracks our information, even if we're not on our devices. 

    One of the other downsides to TikTok is impact of the social media platform on our mental health, especially within the younger generation. Social media in general can severely impact our mental health because people on social media share their life and in a way that makes everything look "perfect" to others, which causes some people to want that life. Along with that, social comparison and body image on social media raises another concern because people, especially the younger generation, are always comparing themselves to others' self-image. This can really contribute to one's mental health and cause problems such as depression, anxiety, disorders, etc. 

Positives vs. Negatives

    Comparing the positives and negatives of TikTok, I personally think whether the positives outweigh the negatives of TikTok, depends on the individual. I know there are people who've gotten famous from the social media app and for some people, TikTok is their way of earning money. So for those people, the social media platform will definitely benefit them more. But for those that aren't, they may see no point in having the app, and those people definitely see the negatives of TikTok more, rather than the positives.