TikTok is a social media app with user-made videos of three minutes or less. Users, from boomers to millennials, are posting opinions, instructions and rants on every subject from cooking to politics to lifestyle and fashion. TikTok is for pure entertainment, education, and more.
The social media platform can be used for shooting and editing the videos, posting them for others to see. Those who don’t want to create videos can still scroll through and discover videos from other creators. According to TikTok, it is “the leading destination for short-form mobile video.”
To get started on TikTok, you simply download the app onto your smart device from an app store, set up an account and then TikTok away!
Karen Floyd’s son introduced her to TikTok and the 67-year-old says she mostly uses it for discovering content because the app is user friendly. “It’s easy to use to me, I’m pretty tech savvy.” Floyd says she mostly uses the app for entertainment, favoring TikToks that feature dogs and recipes.
Her husband, 69-year-old Dwight Floyd, says he enjoys using TikTok as well. “I like it because I am just fascinated with clips about how to fix things,” he says. “It could be fixing a doorknob, fixing a car tire, it could be fixing any kind of thing.”
The Floyds say they are not interested in creating TikToks of their own. “It crossed my mind for a second, and that’s about how long it lasted,” says Dwight.
If you decide to make your own content, there are dozens of tutorials on the internet. To search for videos of interest already posted on TikTok, place terms in the search bar on the app. Once you find the content you enjoy, be sure to follow that TikToker for more.