Increasingly there has been a somewhat generational divide between the userbase of Youtube and the userbase of TikTok. The cutoff appears to be between 2000-2004, where those born before or near this general time gravitate to YouTube and those born after gravitate to TikTik. But why?
You could write it off as young people having short attention spans, but plenty of older people are using Twitter, which is similar in concept to TikTok, just in text form. No, there is a greater cultural trend towards low effort, bite sized material. This is evident in virtually every facet of media lately.
This could possibly be attributed towards the sheer oversaturation of information we're bombarded with on a daily basis. Powerful forces at play to sell you their oversimplified idea of the big picture, at the expense of the finer details. In order to take everything in, it may become almost necessary to "skim". So naturally, services such as twitter have popped up, allowing anybody to skim things for you and post it neatly in less than 300 characters.
But why such a short gap in the age divide? Exponential growth. The curve of information isn't linear, it gets infinitely larger every single day. So, a few years may not seem like a big deal but when things grow that rapidly, it's a big difference. Those more in favor of more detailed content may not have been as oversaturated by an endless wall of content than those introduced to the internet a few years after them, allowing them room to discover specific things they liked and know what they prefer.
On the flipside those thrust into the hypersaturated internet of today may not know where to start, but TikTok offers a sampler of sorts, little bites of content from many people. This may appear easier to manage than a vast, complex, and bureaucratic platform like YouTube.
Oversaturation is only going to get worse, much more rapidly each year. It's going to be interesting to see how society changes as the curve approaches infinite. There's much more garbage than gold, so though the quality content may be greater in numbers it won't hold a handle to the vast pile of duds that will forever pile on and bury it. This may include critically harmful misinformation and misguidance. Only a strong thinker will be able to withstand such an endless assault.
Due to the hypersonic speed of online affairs and this oversaturation issue, I believe it is very important to get out there and interact with the physical world around you. These problems are far less pronounced there and may leave one with room to breath. Additionally it is easier to sort out the garbage from the gold when you can physically see it. So, get out there and live for real.
.....until the VR edition of internet is invented.
