I've been asked the question a few times, "Do you think TikTok would be as popular as it is today if not for the pandemic?"
It's a fair question to ask since TikTok did seemingly appear out of nowhere the moment lockdown arrived (unless you were born in the 2000s, in which case you had already been on TikTok for eons). It's the ultimate time waster, and 2020 was a year created to be wasted. So it's logical to ask, "If 2020 didn't happen, would TikTok still have taken over all of our lives?"
And the answer is yes. Unequivocally yes. TikTok did not take over our lives because of the pandemic. TikTok took over our lives because it's a phenomenal product.
TikTok revolutionized social media by making it entirely frictionless. You don't have to make a single decision. No having to worry about who to follow. No having to dig through options on an annoying homepage. No having to weed out all the ads and racist uncles fighting over Kanye West just to see the content you want. With TikTok, all you have to do is open the app, and that's it. Instant, endless entertainment, personalized just for you. They nailed it.
COVID-19 dramatically sped up the adoption curve for some companies like Zoom, pushing it years ahead in its user growth projections overnight when the world shutdown. This is probably true for TikTok too. The number of people who downloaded the app in March 2020 brought TikTok from a novelty dance app to a reimagined YouTube overnight, so we can't overlook the impact the pandemic had on how quickly TikTok became the alpha app.
But it would have become the alpha app regardless. It was almost inevitable. Maybe it would have taken a bit longer to reach those user numbers, but the app is just too well-designed to even consider a world where it never blew up. TikTok isn't a pandemic darling. It's just a great product.
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