Tik Tok v. Instagram: new social media app dances its way into the spotlight

Story by Takashi Harada and Bryce Aston

Everyone knows and loves the app and website known as Instagram. It’s been the one of the most popular social media apps among millennial’s and Gen-z kids for the last 5 years. However there is a new app on the up and coming.

An app called Tik Tok was created in April of 2016, but only recently started catching traction. With many people calling the app the new “Vine”, a former popular app that went out of business in 2017, a lot of people have found similarities between the two apps and that has given people a big reason to download it.

Now the beloved Instagram. Almost anyone you talk to will say they have an account for one reason or another. Whether that be to interact with friends and family or to promote their brand almost everyone has one.

With those things in mind though Instagram has become more than just friends, family, and business. There have been a ton of pages that have popped up on Instagram that are dedicated to making comedic and informative posts such as skits, cooking shows, and arts and crafts. People love this aspect of Instagram and it has brought people back on an everyday basis because if we’re being honest your friends and family do not care about you enough to come and check everyday to see if you came and posted a new picture.

With pages like this being made Instagram has accumulated over 500 million daily users. Now with numbers like that you wouldn’t think there would be much competition when in fact Instagram was the third most downloaded app in 2019. Behind Youtube which has caught a lot of traction recently as well,but coming in at number 1 was indeed Tik Tok clocking in at over 33 million downloads where as Instagram had over 22 million.

So why is Tik Tok so popular and the answer will differ from person to person but in short it is because of the videos that range from anywhere from ten seconds to a full minute are fascinating to watch.

Especially the dance videos. People love these short energetic videos of people doing a trendy dance to one of their favorite songs. What really gets people is when they incorporate the songs lyrics into skits.

A song will be playing and a scenario will be playing out and the song will be playing in the background and when certain lyrics start playing the person will mouth the words at the exact time in the song and it has people rolling on the floor if it is done correctly.

You aren’t limited to songs exclusively though. A lot of people will upload their own videos and people love those too and people will do the same thing and use their audio and create skits off of that but with different scenarios.

Now which app is the better app, or is one app going to kill the other? I guess that just depends on the reason a person is using each app and what their sense of comedy is.

If you use Instagram for posting pictures of yourself and your life exclusively then Tik Tok isn’t going to be something you will use regularly. More so as some source of quick entertainment.

If you use Instagram as a form of entertainment though then Tik Tok may very well take over all your free time. All depends on what your favorite form of entertainment is. If you love videos then Tik Tok is for you. If you love pictures of memes then Instagram will probably be more enjoyable to you.

Both apps are phenomenal in their own way, but don’t be surprised if you start to see Tik Tok videos on your Instagram feed because someone really felt the need to share it because it was that good.