TikTok, the world’s leading destination for short-form mobile video, has attained stellar success across the globe and has also been rapidly gaining popularity in Pakistan. The short-form video platform has boomed over the past few years thanks to its ease of use, tools that facilitate creativity, a focus on safety features, as well as its offering of localized content.
It’s no surprise that a country like Pakistan, which has a burgeoning tech savvy young population, already has several popular TikTok users who have built a regional fandom and are no less popular than traditional celebrities, thanks to the creative content they showcase on TikTok that resonates with their local audience.
What is TikTok?
In a world where attention spans are getting shorter, TikTok’s short-form video format is perfect, as it allows consumption of content in bite-sized pieces. It’s this approach that has attracted hundreds of millions of followers to TikTok. In fact, last year, TikTok was selected as one of Google Play’s best apps of 2018 in the ‘most entertaining’ category in 18 markets around the world.
There is a firm focus on creativity on TikTok. If you’re an aspiring singer, dancer or chef, whether you love cars, science, sports or fashion, a vast array of tools including various filters, stickers, music options and special effects among other features will allow you to produce truly entertaining and polished videos straight from your smartphone.
How does TikTok keep its users safe?
It is also imperative to mention that with the growing popularity, TikTok is committed to promoting a safe and positive in-app environment.
TikTok offers policies and tools such as Community Guidelines to help people understand how to use the platform in a positive and appropriate way, and what not to post. It also has a number of measures in place today to protect users, for example allowing users to set their accounts private, which lets them approve or deny followers and restricts their uploaded content and incoming messages to followers only. Other protections include restricted viewing mode, comment filters, and in-app reporting.
TikTok has recently added yet another feature that not just its users but even the parents of teenagers will appreciate. To ensure a moderate and responsible usage of the app, TikTok now offers an ‘anti-addiction reminder.’ With this feature, a bubble pop-up message will appear on the user’s screen when they have spent more than a certain amount of time on the app, ranging from every 60 to 90 minutes. This is an amazing initiative from the app makers who are actually committed to see their users engage in other healthy activities and not spend their whole days making and watching TikTok videos.
We recommend our readers to use this digital wellbeing feature from TikTok in their day-to-day usage for the app and even set a timer on the usage of general social media apps as well for a healthier body and mind.