The popular app TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, has over 800 million active users and has become one of the most downloaded apps. TikTok is a video-sharing social app that was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese multinational internet technology company. Despite the massive issue regarding TikTok being owned by a data-mining company, the app still thrives for many children between the ages of 13-18 and even reaches some adults and celebrities.

TikTok is a pretty well-known platform and many people are on it for hours a day. While TikTok does get lots of profit, “TikTok Creators” do say how they don’t get paid anything by them, they only get paid from live videos done on the app. The app still shows some support to its creators by sending assortments of items during special occasions and more. Many creators must use other apps to make money from TikTok. But, unfortunately, TikTok itself does not pay popular creators.

TikTok has reached all sorts of celebrities and people who care to share personal stories, advice, and more. There are doctors, dermatologists, lawyers, CEO’s, and more on TikTok. Before it’s big blow up, it was known as Musical.ly, which was primarily just an app used to lip-sync to videos. But now, there are places for people to reach out for support, advice, even politics has made its way to the app. Politics, and even regular arguments in general, have brewed a storm up on the app. There is a lot of negativity clouding up the app and some people resort to turning off comments to stop the hate.

With TikTok comes “cancel culture.” Basically, if one person does a bad deed, TikTok users will all “cancel” the person. Cancelling a person just really means people will be forced to not like them and even go as far as consistently sending hate comments or mail to them. It’s a huge problem on TikTok as it causes a lot of mental issues for the people receiving loads of hate by the minute. Daily users and big creators try to speak up about cancel culture in order to prevent the spread of it. The main argument used is “these are people you are bullying and sending hate to.” The idea of cancel culture is very toxic and terrible for the app’s users. It creates a danger zone when people may just want to use the app to spread positivity.

In the end, TikTok is an app for all sorts of people. It has its pros and cons but despite the cons, people still use the app daily. TikTok continues to influence the people of our society and shows how people act behind a screen. With its helpful advice and cancel culture, users are left at a crossroad. It’s hard to get past all the negativity but there are the good people out there on the app. Especially during quarantine, its daily users will most likely continue to rise and TikTok will continue making profit and will continue to be a large platform for everybody.