Throughout high school, it felt like something new was happening every day. One week, a famous TikToker was being canceled for racist tweets; the next, a TikTok dance trend appeared, and everyone rushed to recreate it. Some weeks, the buzz was about the latest trending lip gloss—one of the dozens released that month. These things often happened simultaneously, and I was not just an observer. I was as addicted to TikTok as everyone else was. Almost every teenager I know seems to have a TikTok account, and often, life and TikTok feel synonymous. I believed spending hours on TikTok daily was normal; reading James Williams’ Stand Out of Our Light and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents proved it wasn’t.
Reading these books over the summer gave me insight into why humans are drawn to platforms like TikTok. Though neither author directly mentions TikTok, their ideas help explain its magnetic pull. Our attention, as humans, is invaluable, and TikTok is constantly vying for it, always trying to steal our attention. James Williams categorizes our attention into three types: spotlight attention, which helps us focus on immediate tasks; starlight attention, which guides us by our broader values and aspirations; and daylight attention, which allows us to reflect and form our goals. Williams’s understanding of attention helped me explore how TikTok’s relentless pursuit of our attention affects our ability to live meaningful lives. Freud’s exploration of the tension between societal demands and individual fulfillment in Civilization and Its Discontents helped explain why TikTok is addictive.
The official TikTok website’s mission statement is “to inspire creativity and bring joy.” TikTok is where creativity dies, and joy becomes superficial. The point of TikTok is like every other central platform: to make a lot of money. However, unlike other social media platforms, TikTok mostly pushes out 21 to 34-second videos rather than just photos or written posts. Additionally, on TikTok, users typically follow strangers, unlike on Facebook or Instagram, where people might mainly follow their relatives and friends. On TikTok, you are mostly exposed to strangers and content that the TikTok algorithm thinks you would enjoy based on your previous activity.
TikTok’s algorithm determines the content on each user’s ‘For You’ Page (FYP), a recommendation engine for individual users. The exact workings of the Tik Toks algorithm are not apparent. Still, we know it utilizes likes, comments, follows, and how long a user spends on a particular video to determine what videos appear on their ‘For You’ page and in what order. Every TikTok account gets impressively (and sometimes unsettlingly) personalized by the algorithm. This explains why your friend constantly sees cooking videos, your sister gets all the true crime content, and you end up with an overwhelming amount of frog videos.
So, why do people post? I am sure it is fun, but when it comes to the core reasons, there are two: first, to make money, and second, to attract attention. Regarding the former, TikTok encourages people to post through programs like the Creator Fund. The requirements for the creator fund are that the user is at least 18 years old and has at least 10,000 followers. The TikTok creator fund users are given an RPM or revenue per thousand impressions, meaning how much a user can make per 1,000 views. This number fluctuates between $0.07 to $1.60 throughout the month. These numbers initially seem low, but it is possible to make upwards of $160 per 100,000 views, and most users post more than one video daily. However, revenue earned through creator funds pales compared to what TikTok influencers can make through brand partnerships.
Regarding the latter point, when I say people post for attention, I do not mean that they are attention seekers; I mean they are human. Seeking validation or approval is a core component of human nature. As adolescents grow up, the need for validation only increases, which is critical in shaping their self-esteem. This could be in the form of likes, comments, or shares; it is what Williams means when he describes “Social interaction [becoming] a numbers game” (Williams 84).
Furthermore, we must address the second type of Tik-Toker: the consumer. Watching TikTok videos is exciting because of the unpredictability of what comes next. It offers a glimpse into others’ lives, creating a sense of connection and allowing us to imagine ourselves in their shoes. Freud writes, “the life imposed on us is too hard for us to bear: it brings too much pain, too many disappointments, too many insoluble problems. If we are to endure it, we cannot do without palliative measures” (Freud 15). TikTok is today’s palliative measure; many will plug in their headphones and open TikTok, hoping it can distract them from the impending deadline of homework they have been procrastinating or the sounds of their parents arguing in the next room. Williams would agree with Freud, writing, “In order to win the fierce global competition for our attention, [TikTok’s] design was forced to speak to the lowest parts of us and to exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities” (Williams 29). TikTok is crafted to engage us at a deep, often unconscious level, making it difficult to resist its allure. Freud highlights the psychological need for distraction, while Williams points out how TikTok’s design exploits this need, keeping users hooked and engaged.
Just as TikTok keeps users hooked by systematically exploiting their need for distraction, TikTok creators do the same. Nara Smith, a famous TikTok influencer, subtly manipulates attention by creating associations between comfort and consumer products. Nara begins all her videos in a low, pacifying, calm voice. In one video, she starts speaking in her usual tone, saying nothing brings her more joy than cookie dough ice cream. She quickly associates her pleasure from cookie dough ice cream with the new “Joyphoria” fragrance by “Charlotte Tilbury.” She then begins to describe the smell of the fragrance as warm, with hints of vanilla, cashmere, and jasmine, saying that it brings her so much happiness, and so she associates it with one of her favorite ice cream flavors.
This style of marketing Nara utilizes is expected; it is what Williams describes as “the line between advertising and nonadvertising getting blurry as with ‘native advertisements”’ (Williams 32). Through Native marketing, Nara skillfully promotes brands and sponsorships, seamlessly blending them into her everyday life. The subtle promotion of these products makes viewers feel that if they purchase them, their lives can be a semblance of Nara’s life. Her viewers leave comments under her post, writing, “Why is this actually making me want to go buy this perfume” (@sarahtrussell0) or “Nara’s videos bring me happiness” (@zoebeebeauty), with 91 people using the like button to agree with her comment.
So, why do people watch Nara Smith? Her videos feature the triad of “Beauty, cleanliness, and order [which] obviously occupy a special position among the requirements of civilization.” (Freud 66). She showcases a life that is not only visually appealing but also meticulously organized and serene. Her beautifully curated appearance, neat attire, and the pristine kitchen pictured in her videos are all elements that serve as a microcosm of these civilized aspirations. They present a vision of a life where the stresses of conflict, repression, unmet desires and imperfections of human nature, societal pressures, and existential anxieties of the everyday are smoothed over by a veneer of perfection – an environment where beauty, cleanliness, and order prevail creates a space where people feel safe, content, and controlled.
This strategy is not unique to Nara; Mikayla Nogueira, another TikTok influencer, similarly manipulates these desires for beauty, cleanliness, and order. In her video from mid-July of this year, she begins speaking in her usual loud, exaggerated tone, enthusiastically promoting “sun drops” and “blush drops” from Morphe, a famous makeup brand. She expresses that Morphe’s comeback is precisely what she needed this year. Mikayla reviews the Morphe products and has nothing but positive things to say about them. She describes them as “summery, beautiful, and cohesive.” Her exaggerated tone and glowing reviews are designed to appeal to her young viewers longing for a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing lifestyle, even if her praise seems somewhat dramatic. Her videos imply that human fulfillment can be derived by purchasing the products she promotes.
If I had seen this video alone, I would have thought these Morphe blushes were her favorites. However, just two days earlier, Mikayla posted a nearly identical video featuring another brand, implying those were her new favorites. Most of Mikayla’s videos follow this same pattern—promoting different products, clearly gifted to her, in almost the same way. Under her Morphe video, a viewer commented, “Oh my god, I haven’t bought a Morphe product in years, but this I might cave for” (@vickim97), with 186 people using the like button to agree with her comment. Mikayla replied to her comment, writing, “Lol, I know what you mean.” However, she does not know what the viewer meant, as she is not purchasing these products—most influencers, including Mikayla, do not pay for the items they review. They often rave about a product after using it just once, primarily to stay on the makeup brand’s PR list or to keep getting brand deals.
Like Mikayla, Iman Gadzhi, another TikTok influencer, uses the allure of an idealized lifestyle to captivate his audiences. Gadzhi begins one of his popular videos by saying, “When you eventually build yourself into a man of substance, women will just come to you.” In the following clip, he proceeds to show a video of himself relaxing on a yacht and the following clip of him walking to an expensive car with a woman who checks off all societal beauty standards. In another video, Gadzhi shows his assistant the amount of money he has in his checking account; she is pleasantly shocked. The video then transitions into clips where Gadzhi is coming out of private jets, walking into rooms with security, opening expensive car doors, driving fast cars, eating at expensive restaurants, etc. It is evident in Gadzhis’s eyes that being a “man of substance” relies on how many zeroes you have in your bank account.
Gadzhi feeds off of insecure masculinity. At first glance, he seems harmless, while a quick look at his TikTok bio reveals a link to his “get rich fast” courses. Iman sells an unrealistic lifestyle, suggesting that the only way to become a “man of substance” is by purchasing his “Entrepreneurship courses.” Gadzhi promotes these courses amidst videos flaunting his wealth and power, making it easier to exploit his audience.
The clips Gadzhi uses in his content promote a singular definition of success: private jets, high-rise apartments, and five-star restaurants. He eludes that once you reach a particular net worth, you can let the id run free without consequences. According to Williams, “When our daylight is compromised, epistemic distraction results. Epistemic distraction is the diminishment of underlying capacities that enable a person to define or pursue their goals: capacities essential for democracy such as reflection, memory, prediction, leisure, reasoning, and goal-setting” (Williams 68). By positioning himself as a successful entrepreneur who has mastered making money and living freely, Gadzhi shifts the viewer’s daylight attention to fit his definitions of success and wealth. The viewer forgets the goals they have forged by their environment, moving them to fit the opulent lifestyle they see on TikTok. His content often focuses on achieving success quickly and efficiently; this aligns with the id’s desire for immediate gratification as the promise of quick success entices many impressionable people.
So, where do we go from here? To address the manipulation of human psychology through the commodification of attention and desire on TikTok, I first need to understand the intentions behind its creation. While I do not know the creators’ true purpose, Williams suggests, “No one in the digital attention economy wants to be standing in the lights of our attention. Yet the system, to sustain itself, has been compelled to go all the way” (Williams 92). The creators of TikTok did not set out with ill intentions; instead, the platform evolved this way. As Freud notes, “Civilized man has traded in a portion of his chances of happiness for a certain measure of security” (Freud 65). The creators sought to reclaim some of their happiness and created an unregulated environment with the same harshness as our society, an environment that has allowed us to act upon our human urges freely.
Overall, perhaps it was a blend of both—software engineers consciously aimed to create something valuable for users while subconsciously wanting to create a space that allowed us to act upon our human urges freely with limited consequence. Given this complex blend of motives, the solution to the TikTok dilemma is not altering the platform. It is changing our mindset.
Start by taking breaks; it is crucial to understand how much time we spend on TikTok daily. “It’s enough to say that when you put people in different environments, they behave differently” (Williams 99). People behave differently on TikTok than they would in their day-to-day lives. To combat losing yourself in TikTok, ask yourself questions about what you want from life; that way, you can understand your personal goals. Williams argues, “To rise to this challenge, we have to lean into the experiences of awe and wonder” (Williams 127). This can be picking up new hobbies in your free time to help you relax and be productive. You should pause your endless scrolling and instead use TikTok intentionally. Whether you are looking for a cake-baking tutorial, learning French, or seeking job interview tips, I hope the next time you open TikTok, you do so with a purpose.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated by James Strachey, W.W. Norton & Company, 1961.
Williams, James. Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
@Mikaylanogueira. “MORPHE IN THEIR COMEBACK ERA” TikTok, 7/17/2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8JdmtCT/.
@Realimangadzhi. “The reaction said it all” TikTok, 7/22/2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8JdCXFF/
@Realimangadzhi. “Stop wasting your time with this” TikTok, 7/27/2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8JdU2rG/
@Narasmith. “What brings you joy?” TikTok, 7/23/2022, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8JdVxNY/