The TikTok Phenomenon

I can tell you right from the start that I’m personally not a fan of TikTok. The postings are generally annoyingly upbeat and the content most of the time is just plain goofy. Yet it’s incredibly fascinating once you step back and consider what’s actually happening on TikTok.

First, it’s a creative outlet for a lot of people. People used to paint or take pictures and display these for others to admire. If it was good, someone would pay to see it or actually buy it. There’s plenty of creativity on display on TicTok. Some good and some not. Swipe if you don’t like it: watch it over and over and over again if you do.

You’ll also see people posting very personal stuff, their troubles, grief, and sometimes joy. They’re using TikTok as outlet to share their feelings as if they have no one else to talk to: each like and comment is an acknowledgement of their feelings, like a virtual pat on the back or a hug. TikTok has become a world-wide community and it’s not hard to find huge groups of sympathetic and like-minded people.

YouTube doesn’t seem to have the voracity or energy that TikTok has. YouTube (this is just my opinion) is your low-key, how-to resource, and a great historical archive: what goes on YouTube, never leaves YouTube. But I don’t think it has the same societal reach anymore that TikTok now has. No one posts their cat videos on YouTube anymore.

Yes, TikTok is a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese government. They undoubtedly collect a huge amount of personal data and promote nefarious political rhetoric. But so does Facebook, LinkedIn, and every social media platform out there. So be smart: just don’t believe anything and you’ll be fine.

Chinese government controlled or not, TikTok is now also now one of the greatest economic and retails sales engines on the planet. TikTok was launched in 2016 and by 2020, it had over 2 billion subscribers worldwide. That’s a huge market to tap into and many companies, from the very small to the very large, have a presence there. If your company is not on TikTok, you’re missing out.

My wife and I started a small business to make and sell chairs to meet the sensory needs of children like our autistic daughter. We built a prototype at first just for her, but her therapists seemed to like it, and we built a few more for them as well. With nothing quite like it available commercially, we thought we’d start a business called A Busy Child. Our son called it the Wiggle Seat and that seemed appropriate and great brand name. We set up an LLC and of course a website: www.abusychild.com

And then we posted a few videos on TikTok. The first did Okay but the second one went nuts: over 300K views over the weekend with more than 30K likes (https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8hobdjo/ ). My wife spent hours responding to the hundreds of comments that kept coming for days. The website started to receive a steady stream of traffic from all over the globe.

The goal for our company and the Wiggle Seat is to help kids with sensory needs and attention deficit issues to be able to stay in one place to help with eating and play. I personally think any kid would like it and it would be great to have a couple in every home and not just in therapy centers.

If that ever does happen, TikTok will be to blame.