TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy and talent videos. ByteDance first launched Douyin for the China market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of China; however, it only became available in the United States after merging with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018. TikTok and Douyin are similar to each other, but run on separate servers and have different content to comply with Chinese censorship restrictions. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. They also have global offices including Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.The app is popular in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the United States, Turkey, Russia, and other parts of the world. Since the early days of social media (in particular on YouTube,) lip-syncing videos have proved a popular form of user-generated content among teens. The popularity of TV shows such as Lip Sync Battle has also helped drive interest in this type of platform.
Teens also enjoy competing in the different challenges which can be entered via the trending hashtags on the app. The app has a very dedicated, young community of users. For many of these users, gaining likes, followers and getting their videos featured on the app are important priorities. Creating and sharing their own content is now a big part of how teens spend their time online. Teens are moving away from being spectators online to becoming content creators. One of the major concerns of TikTok has been the dark side of the app in the form of cyberbullying, harassment, and children being exposed to sexually explicit content. However, the problem lies with the underage audience and the nature of the content. Though one needs to be 13 years of age or older to use the app, it’s not hard to find kids as young as 9.
It has been a topic of debate whether an app like TikTok should be banned. Finally, the IT ministry has banned 59 Chinese-owned applications, including TikTok, ShareIt, UC Browser, Likee, WeChat, and Bigo Live. The Ministry stated they were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of india, security of state and public order.”