#microtarget

TikTok’s Algorithm and How it Works.

Like many other social media applications, TikTok uses an intricate algorithm to determine what videos and ads to push to a person's account. Unlike other platforms, you do not have to follow any of these influencers for their content to appear on your feed. The algorithm works based on likes, shares, saves, and comments. Although the people you follow can influence the content that appears, you do not need to follow someone to get their videos on your “ForYouPage.” (FYP). Another aspect considered when TikTok determines what is pushed out to a person is how long a person watches a video. The longer a person watches a type of content, the more it will appear, furthering its vacuum (Dias and Jeanavive, 2021). All these aspects of an algorithm combined steer a consumer down a certain content rabbit hole. 

A person can become a “micro-target” for certain content within a few hours, creating an “echo-chamber” of various values and beliefs.  While it may not always be harmful, it can promote dangerous content and ideas into young people's minds. TikTok has been found to influence users' social, sexual, and cultural identities and can influence people to want to change themselves based on their “ForYouPage” (Dias and Jeanavive, 2021), so if your feed is full of videos on the same idea, from the same person, or the same topic reposted repeatedly by different people, it’s not surprising that the person may conform to these videos. When such a powerful algorithm is combined with young, impressionable minds, it becomes extremely easy to influence them and mold them into a person that aligns with toxic traits, gender roles, and sexist behavior.

How the Algorithm can influence Behaviors and Ideas

Many different kinds of videos can be found on TikTok, and not all of them are concerning. That said, gender stereotypes are perpetuated within many TikTok videos and trends. Chapter two of Gendered Lives talks about how gender roles are social constructs that are learned during childhood and everyday experience (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2020). These traditional roles can be harmful because it encourages men to be violent while at the same time telling women to be docile and to endure abuse (Allan G. Johnson). A theme in the essay Gender , Migration, and Exlie which can be found in Gendered Lives it discusses how throughout the world gender roles can be attributed to the reason why gender related violence is unreported (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2020). When people watch videos on TikTok that have gender roles, it can cause an unconscious bias. This bias may appear as they interact with family, friends, classmates, and coworkers. Gender roles can appear through subtle trends and videos, demeaning jokes, or explicit videos that detail what a person should act like. 

SOURCES

Dias, Avani, Jeanavive McGregor and Lauren Day. “The Dark Side of TikTok’s Algorithm: Beyond the Dances and Skits There’s a Darker Side to TikTok. The App’s Algorithm Is Exposing Users to Dangerous Content While Controlling Which People and Political Movements Get Attention.” ABC News, July 26, 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/tiktok-algorithm-dangerous-eating-disorder-content-censorship/100277134.

Johnson, Allan G. “Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us’ (1997)," in Gwyn Kirk & Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Gendered Lives: International Perspectives” New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.