TikTok Taking The World By Storm: Where Is Our Entertainment Headed?

Lying in bed, sitting on a chair or sofa, or walking down the street, we keep our fingers scrolling on our phones and our eyes glued to the screen, unaware of the passing time. Chances are, there is someone around you—perhaps even you—who engages in this daily routine. In 2025, almost everyone has at least one social media app installed on their smartphones, pulling them into a virtual world that blends fantasy with reality—or perhaps a real world reflected by a nonexistent mirror.

Social media platforms include short-form content platforms, with short video platforms being the most prominent. Among them, TikTok stands out as the most well-known and popular worldwide. By the end of 2024, there were over 170 million monthly active TikTok users in the United States, making up half of the population (SEO.AI); In China, there were around 766 million monthly active Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart) users, also comprising half of the country's population and two-thirds of the population with internet access (Thomala, Kemp). Watching short videos on phones for entertainment has become a widely common and accepted phenomenon in just 4 years, starting in 2018 and taking the world by storm along with COVID-19 coincidently.

Before the pandemic, the world had already fully entered the information age, particularly the mobile era, where nearly everyone owned a smartphone. Watching short videos on such a device became as easy as drinking water. During the pandemic, quarantine measures imposed by many countries forced billions of people to stay at home, isolating them from the outside world. To get rid of boredom and fulfill social needs, people cast their eyes on social media–and TikTok emerged as the leading platform.

Beyond the advantages derived from the era, what made TikTok stand out from other contemporary social media platforms? Its short video format has reshaped the entertainment model since 2020: Instagram has added "Reels," and YouTube has introduced "Shorts" in response. Research shows that short-form videos are extremely addictive, delivering instant joy and satisfaction that keep users hooked. TikTok’s algorithm is also incredibly powerful, with its “For You” page ensuring deep user engagement. (Qin, Omar, and Musetti) There are endless videos, and almost all of them are tailored to your interests.

It is true that TikTok initially brought mostly positive content to users, creating a new form of entertainment and drawing everyone into it. People can view the Alps and Niagara Falls without leaving their homes, enjoy funny videos and share them with friends, and even create their own content to become influencers. TikTok fosters communities based on shared interests and gradually becomes the daily topic of social discourse. However, those who assume TikTok has more positive than negative impacts overlook a crucial point: all the joy and positive influences it brings—entertainment, knowledge, and news—are also available on YouTube. Long-form videos can deliver everything short videos offer in terms of positive sides since they are both streaming videos by nature. What sets short videos apart, however, are their inherently negative natures.

I conducted a survey of 78 participants, including Chinese college students, middle-aged Chinese adults, international college students at UC Santa Barbara, and American adults living in Santa Barbara. This diverse sample includes both young people and adults, as well as individuals from different cultural backgrounds, reducing bias to some extent. The data reveals a clear trend: only 20 percent of respondents feel they can fully control themselves when watching short videos, while nearly 40 percent admit they often find it difficult to stop scrolling. This stark contrast highlights the extremely addictive nature of TikTok, making people stick to its virtual world. However, every era has had its own addictive forms of entertainment, just to different extents, from novels to radio, from television to video games, and from long-form videos to short-form videos. The real concern, therefore, goes far beyond entertainment; it lies in the content amplified and spread by TikTok.

Based on my survey, nearly 90 percent of respondents at least occasionally encounter videos or comments related to fake news, online quarrels, or deliberate criticism, with 35 percent seeing such content frequently. About half report that their moods are negatively affected when exposed to these types of content, yet 80 percent quickly forget about them, not retaining them in their long-term memory. These results suggest that negative content is now widespread in the information ocean, contributing to various social issues while most of us notice its presence but remain indifferent.

First of all, fake news submerges the truth, polarizing people to an extreme extent. This is evident in the widening divide between Democrat and Republican supporters in American politics and the polarization between fervent nationalism and deliberate defamation in Chinese patriotic discourse. Second, online conflicts escalate much more easily than real-world disputes since there are no immediate consequences or punishments, turning the Internet into a chaotic and lawless battleground. Beyond social tensions, short videos also negatively impact mental well-being. They amplify stress, anger, frustration, and hostility, particularly among teenagers who lack emotional maturity and critical judgment. This extends to physical health and self-perception—many young viewers, bombarded with idealized beauty standards, may develop unhealthy eating habits in an attempt to match the unrealistic appearances they see on screen. Lastly, TikTok’s ultra-low barrier to content creation is unprecedented. Anyone can upload anything, leading to an overwhelming flood of low-quality and often meaningless content, further diluting valuable and insightful discourse.

Given these overwhelming negative influences, one of the most controversial issues of our time arises: Should we ban TikTok and other short-video social media platforms? Despite all the negative impacts I have demonstrated, my answer is “NO”—we cannot and should not. History cannot be reversed. Why? At the end of my survey, I posed an open-ended question: If all social media platforms disappeared tomorrow, how would you feel? What would you do for entertainment instead? The responses vary–some feel sad, some feel great, and some feel nothing–but the similarities in their alternative entertainment choices are astonishing. Many respondents mention exercising (sports, fitness), traveling, reading books, studying, and hanging out with friends, expressing a belief that they would engage in more meaningful and positive real-life activities, just like the times before social media existed. However, I am confident in asserting that this vision is somewhat idealistic, for people tend to imagine scenarios in a way that aligns more with what they wish to happen rather than what is likely to happen. As a result, such scenarios would only occur for those already inclined toward them. Yet, still, some respondents provided particularly realistic answers, admitting they would probably just switch to watching TV, playing video games, or even having sexual lives.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Neil Postman suggested that human entertainment would become increasingly fragmented, meaningless, and addictive. (Postman) Our history of content entertainment has progressed through printed books, newspapers, radio, film, television, video games, and now, social media and short videos. If social media were to disappear, it would be nothing but history rewind to the era of television and video games. But looking back at the 20^th century, was everyone doing meaningful things instead of sitting on the couch watching TV? Furthermore, we would not simply be going back to the era of television; instead, we would devote ourselves to seeking newer, flashier, and even more addictive forms of entertainment, just as we are now in the era of social media, where television has almost faded away.

In this case, what will be our next entertainment? The future remains unpredictable since humans are confined to the era they live in, just as we once could not foresee what would come after television, but we can still make some bold guesses: it might be an AI-driven era where music, art, and videos are mass-produced without human creativity, making them feel even more hollow. Meanwhile, AR and VR technology could further heighten sensory and neural stimulation, expanding beyond sight and sound to potentially incorporate smell, taste, and touch—immersing people even further and deepening our addiction to virtual entertainment.

Freedom and democracy always come at the cost of uncertainty and lack of protection. Entertainment capitalism will only grow more and more uncontrolled. History has shown that there is no general solution, but everyone has the free right to resist being devoured by entertainment and remain conscious, to take control of their own destiny.

Mar 9, 2025, at UCSB

Works Cited Page

Kemp, Simon. “Digital 2024: China.” DataReportal, 21 Feb. 2024, datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-china.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Books, 2005.

Qin, Yao, Bahiyah Omar, and Alessandro Musetti. "The addiction behavior of short-form video app TikTok: The information quality and system quality perspective." Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022): 932805.

SEO.AI's Content Team. "How Many Users on TikTok? Statistics & Facts (2025)." SEO.AI, 23 Jan. 2025, seo.ai/blog/how-many-users-on-tiktok.

Thomala, Lai Lin. "Monthly Active Users of Douyin in China 2022-2024." Statista, 12 Feb. 2025, statista.com/statistics/1361354/china-monthly-active-users-of-douyin-chinese-tiktok/.

Appendix

Questionnaire Questions:
Q1. How much time do you spend on social media daily?
Q2. Which platform do you primarily use? (Choose up to 3)
Q3. How important is social media in your life?
Q4.1. What types of videos do you usually watch? (Choose up to 5)
Q4.2. What is your major feeling while watching these videos?
Q5.1. How often do you find it hard to stop scrolling?
Q5.2. Have you ever taken a break from social media?
Q6.1. How often do you come across videos or comments related to fake news, online quarrels, or deliberate criticism?
Q6.2. How do you feel about them?
Q6.3. How long does the feeling last?
Q7. If all social media platforms disappeared tomorrow, how would you feel? What would you do for entertainment instead?