Using three metrics, the Washington Post journalists partnered with researchers to better understand TikTok users’ habits. They worked with 800 American TikTok users and checked in after 1 week, 1 month, and 5 months.
How Much Time Per Day
After 1 week, light users increased their daily watch time from 32 to 45 minutes.
After 1 month, light users increased their dilay watch time again to 54 minutes.
After 5 months, light users were up to 71 minutes of daily use.
Heavy users stayed relatively consistent with around 4 hours of use per day throughout the study.
How Many Times the App is Opened Per Day
Over the 5 months, light users went from opening the app 4 times per day to 8 times per day. Heavy users stayed relatively consistent, opening the app around 20 times per day.
How Fast Users Swipe Through Videos
After 5 months, light users went from swiping every 15.1 seconds to swiping every 12.9 seconds. Heavy users went from swiping every 11.4 seconds to swiping every 10.1 seconds.
Marc Potenza, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, explains that our brains respond to video personalized to our tastes in ways similar to how they react to money, food, and other pleasurable substances. The personalization occurs thanks to TikTok’s algorithm.
Here are some tips to help parents and teens on TikTok manage their own use more mindfully:
- Start with helping your teen develop an accurate understanding of their habits. Check app-specific screen time using the tools within the phone.
- Talk about why they choose to go to TikTok and other apps. Users should go there because they are looking for certain content or have a purpose, and not because it is a default activity when they are bored. Consider what other default activities they can start practicing: reading, an audio or video call with someone to catch up, playing with a pet.
- Turn off TikTok notifications. This can prevent the user from feeling called to the app when a notification pops up.
- Parents can also set time limits for using TikTok and other apps using the tools built into your phone or TikTok’s parental supervision tools called Family Pairing. It is important to talk to kids about what those limits might be so you are working in partnership.