35 year old US resident here - the recommendation algorithm is incredibly good at being very quickly tuned to your interests, so if you learn to take that seriously it's an incredible tool for learning about different crafts / trades / topics from experts who create content.

For example, my feed was full of electrician and HVAC content, philosophy, skiing tutorials, constitutional law, international news, physics, etc.

You have to use the app with intention to arrive at and maintain this state. I actively press the "not interested" button on videos that are mindless or just not in line with the kind of experience I want (rage bait, suggestive content, brand content, etc). That's a skill that many non-TikTok users don't really understand as well I think.

The algorithm is very much like an AI companion in some ways, which can be good or bad depending on the user's maintenance and steering of that relationship.

I have a single anecdote, not much insight, but I'm interested in advancing discussion around your question.

My wife, in her mid-30s, has friends who will share or send her links to TikTok videos. She says that she can't view them because she doesn't have an account, but she doesn't want to create an account because she "knows she has an addictive personality" [1] and has read about the power of TikTok. Anyway, I imagine that this is how it starts for a lot of people: not wanting to miss out on stuff sent by a friend, creating an account to check it out, and then rapidly getting sucked into the addictive user experience. And it keeps spreading the same way from there.

[1] She does, and I'm thankful that she recognizes this. She's already a heavy consumer of Facebook Reels, by the way.

US Resident here. I am in my 50s. Joined TikTok in November 2019. Never joined twitch etc., been away from X for years, and I check FB/IG but rarely, almost never used discord, and not aware of all platforms, but I used TikTok and Reddit heavily.

I checked out TikTok first because someone had posted a link to - shudder - another Israel Palestinian viral video. I am none of those, in fact I have Indian non-muslim non-jewish origin (but been American for a long time). While scrolling through over the days, there were a couple of things I liked and which eventually got me hooked

- There was this brother sister video (not sure I can name names) where they are just running through a house while filming, and end up in front of the bathroom mirror dancing, and then you realize that one of the persons in the mirror is the cameraperson all along. Very well done movements, awesome music, and 100s of copycats, maybe 1000s. I watched almost all of them I guess :) Goes with a song - "taking a picture of you, ramalama bang bang". The brother posted another draft of the same yesterday (from 2019) just before the ban, and I spent another 15 minutes scrolling through the variations. Quite an experience. There were videos by ordinary people that were just so well done.

- There were 2 Indian songs which were copied / parodied really well in those days. Nowadays the copycats do not seem original, but those 2 songs - the variations people created were amazing. And this was before India banned Tiktok so there was a lot more "Indian Indian" content rather than "Indian American" content. Maybe it was the first time I was watching these, but these were joyful, and there was no going back after that.

Over time, you get familiar with many creators. You engage with some of them. Yes there is a lot of people trying to build their "celebrity/influencer" profile but there are a lot of genuine connections. I mean, why do I need to only watch my family's birthday pics, when I can track some musicians, follow some amazing cosplay artists, see some parodies and standup comedies. Everything was there. My latest follows were 1) a UK guy traveling through India eating street food, and 2) 2 magicians based in Berlin similar to Siegfried and Roy but different. I even posted some singing videos there not for follows or likes but because the platform gave good tools to create videos, even without lipsyncing.

But you know you can easily get sidetracked and also step out of bounds. People use it to earn money just by talking, people use it to link it to places where only fans will go (but no direct links). You can go down many rabbit holes, I attended lives a few times, but not ordinarily (lot of people do), and I only engaged in 1:1 conversation with 2 people - over 5 years. I just was not comfortable talking to someone I would never meet in person and be able to assess only based on their fake TikTok persona, but people do engage in discussions. And I did buy from the TikTok shop in December because they had a product with an appeal and a price I could not refuse :) So I guess I tried it all.

Could the same be done on IG / YouTube Shorts - I used them occasionally, but no, they are quite subpar. But now that they are the only alternative, so maybe ... after waiting for a few weeks. Right now, Red Note is engaging enough.