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The increasingly popular social media video app is becoming the Gen Z equivalent of Instagram and YouTube for online beauty content.
As the 6th most downloaded international app of 2018 and with half a billion daily active users worldwide, itโs pretty safe to say that TikTok has taken over the internet.
Even though you might not understand exactly what it is, youโve most likely seen the impact that itโs had on pop culture. Iโm sure you know it as the birthplace ofย Old Town Road,ย the record-breaking track that Lil Nas X debuted on the app in February.
Primarily used to create and share 15-second comedic music clips, TikTok is a melting pot of viral videos, but it has another, potentially more lucrative market: the beauty industry.
Proving very popular among beauty influencers who are using the app to promote their content, itโs also beginning to change beauty standards for Gen Z, encouraging us to step out from behind the FaceTune comfort blanket and acknowledge how fake and harmful the world of the influencer actually is.
In the wake of Instagramโs decision to test a ‘like ban’ in several countries – and the Facebook study showing that engagement rates with influencers are at an all time low – the futureโs looking pretty bleak for the photoshopped bloggers trying to endorse skinny teas and diet supplements as #goals.
I donโt know about you, but Iโm getting rather tired of the ultra-curated world of the influencer. Donโt get me started on how bad it is for our mental health.
The tides are turning, though. More and more of us are getting our aesthetic inspo and style tips from TikTok, a much more inclusive platform that doesnโt rely on generic content for popularity and instead offers an open space for all kinds of experimentation.
โThe TikTok community is super supportive. Everyone creates their own kind of thing and the creators are helping each other grow, making collabs and things like that. Itโs not like Instagram, where everyone is more singular, kind of just posting pictures and occasionally videos,โ says 17-year-old user Priscilla.
From a tech perspective, TikTok certainly knows its audience and seems to have gone out of its way to be as user friendly as possible.
The โfor youโ feed makes it incredibly easy to discover specific content and the app does not adhere to the same โclicks and viewsโ focused algorithms that other platforms do, making it much more authentic and explaining why itโs perhaps quite so appealing to the beauty community.
I digress. We already know that thanks toย Euphoriaโs amazingly innovative makeup looks, Gen Z are starting to take more risks than ever with how they look and itโs definitely catching on.
Big brands such as Glossier and Fenty are continuing to embrace self-acceptance and diversity on social media and gone are the days of homogeneous beauty trends; 2019 is the year of expressing yourself.
