Home Outreach Leaders It’s a TikTok World

It’s a TikTok World

TikTok

The most popular site in 2021 was not Google, Amazon, Facebook nor YouTube.

It was TikTok.

If you are unfamiliar with TikTok, it is a video-sharing platform akin to YouTube that allows users to post one-minute-or-less videos. TikTok stars now make more than many of America’s top CEOs, such as the $17.5 million made in 2021 by Charli D’Amelio; and not too far behind her was her sister Dixie who brought in $10 million.

The user demographic of TikTok skews young. Nearly one-quarter of its users in 2021 were between the ages of 10 and 19. This helps explain the number of viral TikTok videos that have been dangerous or, in many people’s minds, just plain dumb, coining phrases such as a TikTok video that has gone “tok-bottom” or “a-tok-alyptic.”

There are two dynamics fueling the popularity of TikTok’s content: It is short, and it is visual. I talked about the importance of both dynamics in my book Meet Generation Z.

Attention Spans

What has been conventional wisdom is true: Attention spans have been shrinking dramatically in recent years; more dramatically than most have realized. According to the research of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8.25 seconds in 2015. That’s approximately a 25% drop in a little more than a decade. So, what does this mean for, say, a church trying to reach out to an internet-based generation? Here are some internet browsing statistics that may cause you to rethink everything:

  • Average length watched of a single internet video: 2.7 minutes

  • Percent of page views that last less than 4 seconds: 17%

  • Percent of page views that lasted more than 10 minutes: 4%

  • Percent of words read on web pages with 111 words or less: 49%

  • Percent of words read on an average (593 words) webpage: 28%

Bottom line? Whatever it is we are attempting to convey, much less explain, will need to be communicated more frequently in shorter bursts of “snackable content—at least initially in the ‘engagement’ phase.”

Some have suggested that what is really operating are highly evolved “eight-second filters.” Generation Z, for example, has grown up in a world where options and information are virtually limitless; time, of course, is not. So, they have developed, almost out of necessity, the ability to quickly sort through enormous amounts of data. Or they rely on sources that do that for them, such as trending information within apps.

The good news is that once something does gain their attention, and is deemed worthy of their time, they can become intensely committed and focused. The very internet that forced them to evolve “eight-second filters” is the same internet that allows them to go deep on any topic they desire and to learn from a community of fellow interested parties. This means you can still engage people on a very deep level with truth. The bad news? You’ve got eight seconds to get past their filters. As one 18-year-old UCLA student said, “Generation Z takes in information instantaneously, and loses interest just as fast.” That’s why Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Millennial Branding, a New York consultancy, tells his advertising partners “that if they don’t communicate in five words and a big picture, they will not reach this generation.”