At one point in time, and for a very long one, YouTube had held the title as the “best video platform”, always defeating its competition, like Vine. Nobody had really affected YouTube’s reign until now.

TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, had begun to take storm in 2018 due to its ‘cringe’ videos. Trends began to spawn, causing people to flood over to TikTok.

YouTube was still powerful over that time, but many had noticed that its power began to weaken, many claiming it to now be ‘boring’ from the amount of irritating YouTube personalities and the YouTube crackdown that favored money and family-friendly content. The censorship attacks seized many beloved content creators, causing a distaste among many. 

With TikTok burgeoning, niche communities were born. This is what was different with TikTok, you got personalized content to closely match your interests. You weren’t spoonfed sponsored videos, you could watch something you thoroughly enjoyed. 

One could say that our attention spans are getting progressively shorter as we’re catered to faster and shorter lifestyles, but I won’t use that argument in this article due to some publications, for example The BBC, that have disproved those findings. 

Though, I do want to bring up how quick TikTok videos can be. They can range from 15 seconds to three minutes, but even with the maximum, it’s still considered short. I don’t think it’s due to our attention spans, but rather how convenient it is. Let’s say it’s five minutes until your lecture starts– you don’t want to start a whole YouTube video, right? You want something quick and something you don’t have to invest yourself in for long. 

TikTok is quick and convenient, it’s easier for people to use when they need to kill some time. YouTube is more of a sit down and relaxed experience and many people are realizing they don’t have as much down time. TikTok also feeds the best of most of your interests and can be way more personalized than YouTube. 

Of course the app that’s quick to watch with the content that is heavily personalized to you is going to win against YouTube. Maybe TikTok will fade away and YouTube will gain its title as the “best video platform” again, but only time will tell.