TikTok offers content for all age groups
By: Vinod Chandrashekhar Dixit
TikTok Day is celebrated on December 29 every year. Thomas Roy an American film, television, and voiceover actor was the creator of Tik Tock Day together with his wife Ruth Roy. The day reminds people to get down working on all the things they meant to accomplish before the year ends.
TikTok is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. The app is used by young people as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing, and allows users to create videos and share them across a community.
Since its 2017 launch, TikTok has become one of the fastest growing social media apps, with India serving as its largest user base followed by the US. Its arrival in India in 2017 opened the doors to fame for many ordinary Indians.
It had reached 2 billion downloads globally, counting 200 million users in India at the time of the ban. The move to ban TikTok comes in the backdrop of the current stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh with Chinese troops.
Among the other banned Chinese apps are UC Browser, Helo, Likee, CamScanner, Vigo Video, Mi Video Call – Xiaomi, and Clash of Kings. In India, TikTok’s success was massive. India has been the biggest driver of new TikTok downloads, generating close to 660 million installs since its launch in 2017.
According to the statistics of 2019, a whopping 39% of the 500 million users of the app globally were from India. Right before the ban, India became the app’s largest market. But the troubles with this were also massive.
According to the sources, it is said that the reasoning given by the government was that these 59 apps are “engaged in activities prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.”
In India TikTok was banned on June 29, 2020, over national security reasons. It has been a year since the ban, and the app, now forgotten and vilified, was once the only source of income for many.
A year after the TikTok ban in India, India Today Tech got a chance to interact with some popular content creators who have finally accepted the TikTok ban and settled with an alternative. According to market research firm Sensor Tower, India used to be one of TikTok’s largest overseas markets, accounting for 18.8 per cent of global downloads in June 2020, followed by the United States at 8.7 per cent.
Top social media platforms such as TikTok, Helo and WeChat came under the ambit of the ban, giving a serious jolt to China’s dream of setting up a Digital Silk Route. Content sharing platform TikTok is the first among the list of apps banned.
We all know that TikTok in recent years, has become a tool for members of many marginalised communities to create their own videos and in absence of TikTok, the marketplace of ideas becomes smaller.
In an interview with India TV, actress Ashnoor Kaur, who has 3.2 million followers on TikTok, celebrated the government’s move saying it presented an opportunity for India to become self-sufficient and use homegrown apps. One agrees that TikTok is a platform that celebrates creativity & expression. TikTok has not only objectionable videos but is also pushing youngsters towards unproductive life where they are living only for few followers and even dying when no. We can always use other apps and the best thing is to have an Indian app. Why should we depend on others when we have educated and able youth in our own country?
(The author hails from Jodhpur Tekra, Ahmedabad)
