Whether it is professionally produced or user-generated – online video content is proving vastly popular with social media consumers, and it is, therefore, expanding across established platforms like Instagram and serving as a springboard medium for newcomer applications like TikTok. This phenomenon was especially highlighted during the coronavirus pandemic, with quality, storytelling, and accessibility standing out as main reasons to watch short videos. It also reflects recent changes in internet user behavior, such as shorter attention span resulting in short-form video platforms becoming major players.

TikTok’s immense popularity mirrors one of the most significant technological trends of the past decade, the shift from desktop to mobile. Despite app downloads fluctuating between 2021 and the beginning of 2023, the popular short video platform still ranks as one of the leading apps both worldwide and in the United States. TikTok app downloads peaked in the first quarter of 2020, reaching over 313.5 million. In July 2021, TikTok reached the milestone of three billion downloads worldwide, despite being banned in India in June 2020 and losing a considerably large audience. The platform, which was particularly popular in the United States for lip-synced short videos, merged with TikTok in August 2018.

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