TikTok

Overview for elderly people who have never used TikTok

What’s TikTok like?

a TikTok is a <3 minute video, usually shared with an accompanying "sound." In the traditional sense as created by the app, these are 15s or 60s-long clips of a popular song, but users create and reuse each other's unique sounds.

• Videos are catalogued under the sound or special effect they use and each sound usually has a theme or trend that constrains the content of the video. Sometimes people use the sound in the background to group their video with the others and create a meta-discussion about the trend, or use a popular sound

• The joke is usually a metaphorical play on the lyrics or narration

• It is customary to provide closed-captioning on videos (!!). Sometimes captions are also used to “amend” the lyrics and specify the exact situation the creator is describing.

• Lots of people also use it as a short-form vlog platform and create simple, informative videos without the use of sounds or trends

• TikTok has a fairly aggressive algorithm that pushes videos to users that have viewed or liked similar content, appearing on the "for you page" of users that don't follow the creator of the video

• Common formats: having a single narrator "play" multiple roles by switching camera angles and adding labels, showing video content with a voiceover, just speaking to the camera (head/shoulders view), doing a tiktok dance while fun facts appear as captions on top of the video. Videos have become more and more freeform as the app grows more popular-- there’s no one way to make a video.

• Videos can be shot using TikTok's in-app camera, or uploaded and edited together using pre-existing video clips

• TikTok also offers lots of in-app special effects and filters, including a green screen that allows you to record over other photos or videos.