We all know the many negative aspects of social media, like cyberbullying, rumor spreading, the development of unrealistic views of life, and peer pressure (and that's only the start of the list), but what if there was a trend on Tiktok that actually benefited American teenagers?
TikTok is a video-sharing social networking platform owned by a Chinese company called Byte Dance. TikTok was first introduced to the United States in April of 2014 as another app, called Musically. After a few years, Musically was bought by a different company and released as TikTok in September of 2016. TikTok was quick to gain popularity, especially among the younger generations, making it the world’s most downloaded app in 2020. Previously most-downloaded apps included Facebook and Messenger, which have been around for much longer. As of June 2021, there were 2.9 billion monthly active users of TikTok--more than the population of the United States.
After TikTok’s quick rise to fame, many different sides of the app were established, like “Dancetok,” “Fashiontok,” “Pottertok,'' and many more. Each specific “type” within the app appeals to a certain group or aesthetic. DanceTok was one of the first to become popular, producing internet personalities like Charli D’amelio and Addison Rae.
But what if I told you that one of TikTok’s “types” or “trends” actually benefits the youth of today? A new side of TikTok emerged in March of 2020, called “BookTok.” BookTok is defined by Wikipedia as “a subcommunity on the app TikTok, focused on books and literature. Creators make videos reviewing, discussing, and joking about the books they read. These books range in genre, but many creators tend to focus on Young Adult fiction, fantasy, and romance novels.” The trend focuses specifically on books: reading them, discussing them, and even writing them.
This trend has positively impacted the book industry. The sales of books went up 8.2% in 2020- the last time this happened was in 2010. Videos with the hashtag “BookTok” have been collectively viewed 12.6 billion times. BookTok has been helping books that have launched a while ago rise to the bestseller list once more. For example, the book They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera was published in September of 2017, quickly making the New York Times Bestseller list. However, the book’s popularity dwindled just as fast after the initial sales. But now, anyone who actively uses TikTok knows how popular They Both Die at the End is on BookTok. The sales of the book went up so fast that Adam Silvera himself was confused about how the book gained popularity seemingly out of nowhere. During an interview with NBC News, he said that he “kept commenting to my readers, ‘Hey, don’t know what’s happening, but there’s been a surge in sales lately, so grateful that everybody’s finding the story years later,’ [...] And then that’s when a reader was like, ‘I’m seeing it on BookTok.’ And I had no idea what they were talking about.”
Although BookTok has been great in helping older books rise to fame again, it has been just as helpful for brand new authors. Chloe Gong is a 22-year-old author currently residing in New York City, and credits her ability to live in such an expensive city to TikTok. Gong published her debut novel, These Violent Delights, in November of 2020, using TikTok as an advertising platform: she had people waiting to buy it long before it was even out for pre-order. Gong had joined TikTok in April of 2020, posting content about books she liked and recommended, and eventually about her own book. As her publishing date crept closer she got more and more attention and support: “Leading up to release, I was able to reach so many more people than I could have really imagined. On Twitter and Instagram, you mostly reach the people that already follow you. But I noticed on TikTok, I was getting droves of comments from people who were just generally interested in books or generally interested in young adult fantasy or the kind of plot material that I was writing about” (NBC News).
It is no secret that social media apps are some of the leading reasons teenagers today are not reading, but TikTok could redeem itself by continuing to popularize books.