Screen Time: On TikTok
When do you think TikTok launched? Go ahead, guess. Did you say 2020? You’re wrong. TikTok launched in 2016. That said, the platform saw something like a 30% user increase in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic and it was downloaded more times than any other app ever during Q1 of 2020. All that to say, as we careen headlong into 2025, TikTok is not just some new fad. The app has been around for nearly a decade and, despite rumblings of a US ban in January, I don’t expect the growth to slow down.
If you’ve never been on TikTok, you’re not alone. It should be noted that 55% of TikTok users are under the age of 30, with 25% under the age of 20. So while TikTok the app isn’t “young,” the user base certainly is. As we consider how screen time factors into TikTok’s algorithm, don’t lose sight of that fact.
There is a reason why I’ve held TikTok for the end of this blog series. TikTok is, far and away, the MOST linked to a user’s screen time. While screen time is a factor for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, it takes a back seat to user experience. On TikTok however, screen time IS the user experience. When a user opens TikTok, there is no blank space. There is no landing page or home screen, no sign posts and no welcome mat. The moment a user opens TikTok (and maybe after an ad) they are fed content. And, to be clear, that isn’t necessarily content made by someone they know or follow. In fact, it’s more likely that the first video is from an account the user does not follow.
TikTok revolves around something called the “For You Page” or the “FYP” if you’re young and hip. The FYP is completely unique to each user and is algorithmically filled with things TikTok thinks the user will like. It can be a mixture of accounts that user follows, accounts followed by the followers of accounts that user follows, accounts similar to accounts followed by the followers of accounts that user follows, or videos of tweens dancing to catchy songs. The real question worth asking is, “how does TikTok build my FYP?”
I have two answers. The first answer is proprietary information held by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The second answer is literally everything you do on the app. Follow me here, this is an extended metaphor. Do you remember the game “Guess Who?”? It’s a two player board game where each person selects one of 30ish characters on their game board and the other player must ask questions to eliminate options until they can guess who the other player chose. With me so far?
So the TikTok algorithm is trying to play “Guess Who?” with you. But instead of a game board with cartoon characters, it’s choosing from 34 million posts daily. Because finding one needle in 34 million haystacks is a tall order, TikTok takes every single piece of information it can from your app usage as an opportunity to ask a “Guess Who?” question. Instead of “Do you have blonde hair?” TikTok gets “user searched for ‘easy recipe.’” TikTok may then combine that information with “user trends towards shorter content” and “user’s IP address is based in the midwest” to show you a slew of videos about easy recipes you can cook with fresh midwestern ingredients in 60 seconds or less.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things TikTok will include in your user profile:
Type of videos you engage with
Type of videos you don’t engage with
Length of video you watch the most frequently
Particular sounds or songs you engage with
Your in-app search history
What videos you’ve saved
What videos you haven’t saved but came back to watch again
How long you spend typing comments
How long you spend posting videos
How long you spend scrolling videos after you’ve posted videos
And so on. This is an infinite list. The limit does not exist.
But, to go back to my metaphor, “Guess Who?” is a two player game. TikTok will take into consideration whatever you give it. That means, by understanding your screen time, you can pick your character portrait in the game. You can present TikTok with who you’d prefer to be, as opposed to who you are. Or you can let TikTok follow you down the degenerate rabbit hole of your choosing. The world is literally your oyster if you consider that the world is TikTok and the Oyster is also TikTok.
So that’s the TikTok algorithm from the user perspective. Hopefully that helps inform how it may work from a creator's perspective. If TikTok is constantly trying to match a user as closely as possible, it needs every video to be clear about its subject and that subject can’t be too broad. If TikTok is sorting through 34 million haystacks and one of those haystacks isn’t like “HEY I’M A HAYSTACK,” TikTok will probably skip right over that haystack. This doesn’t mean that you’re only allowed to do one thing on your account, (I actually made a TikTok about that very subject), but it does mean your content needs to be pointed and strategic.
You should also be prepared for TikTok to frequently not choose your haystack. 34 million posts per day is a truly insane scale. If every single person in Texas watched one of those videos, they’d still come up 4 million short. By the numbers alone, every post you add to TikTok will not go viral. Even if you do everything right, use the right hashtags, edit your video well, follow the trends, there is a solid chance your video will be lost in a field of haystacks. You need to be ok with that because it’s ok! Content marketing is a game of quality AND quantity. What should you take away from this? Great question, reader.
I believe the important thing to remember is this: screen time equals value and TikTok values your screen time more than anyone else. Thus, when you’re creating your TikTok content, do your best to strike a balance between a perfect enough video for you to publish and the perfect video for your perfect person. Do what you can to optimize your video for this game of “Guess Who?” and keep fishing. TikTok won’t pick your haystack unless you keep reminding it to check, but eventually it will.
Finally, remember that TikTok is watching your literal every move on the app. Because it can only see your screen time, it wants you to give it as much as you can. If you’re posting content to the app, it wants to see that you took the time to upload it natively. It wants you to add the captions through TikTok so it can more easily understand the video. Most importantly, it doesn’t want you to leave and it certainly doesn’t want you to lead others off the site. Invest your screen time into the TikTok algorithm and it will invest its gifts back into you.
And here we stand, on the precipice of a completed blog series! Come Monday I’ll have a final installment of this screen time series with a final word of advice.
Have a good weekend,
-MC
This article is the eighth in a series of blog posts about Screen Time. If you missed the first blog of this series, you can read it here. 