TikTok in 2022 became the most-downloaded app in the world, quietly surpassing longstanding forebears Instagram and Twitter. By the end of this year, it will overtake YouTube as the social media platform users spend the most time watching.
The video platform’s meteoric rise has astounded investors and industry experts. As it grows at breakneck speed, a new Guardian US series investigates some of the mounting questions surrounding its operations: the opaqueness of its algorithm, its effect on our brains, its ties to China, and its role in spreading election misinformation.
“TikTok has become a source of culture, a reinforcement of culture, and a cauldron where culture is created,” said Emily Dreyfuss, a researcher at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “It is time to take it seriously.”
