The Language of TikTok Public Square or Echo Chamber?

Over the course of the past several years, since the emergence of the social media and short-form entertainment content platform TikTok, the app has more or less passed itself off as a ‘public square’ to its largely Generation Z-aged audience – seemingly offering a shared digital space where information and opinions can be shared freely.

Traditionally, the Public Square has been a physical place situated within a city, architecturally designed with the promotion of socialization in mind. From the Italian piazzas of the early Renaissance period to the popularization of the American shopping mall in the 1980s, human beings have consistently desired and benefited from shared spaces.

In the twenty-first century however, individuals have spent more and more time interacting with one another through a screen versus face-to-face, ushering in the era of the Global Public Square which chiefly exists within the realm of the digital world. As “issues increasingly cross national boundaries.” (Sealey 4), our ‘public square’ widens, and so does our acknowledgment of outside cultures; however, this developmental shift proves to be a double-edged sword, as platforms like TikTok rather adversely affect our ability to interact with one another freely.

Through TikTok's highly developed algorithm system and Gen Z’s tendency to cycle through trends at a rapid rate, the app is more often than not, merely an echo chamber of regurgitated phrases and words. An echo chamber is essentially an environment in which the emission of one’s own opinions and beliefs are mirrored back to them by like-minded individuals instead of being challenged and debated by others; due to these high-functioning social media algorithms, such as that of TikTok, its “users are exposed to a restricted and uniform range of viewpoints, so strengthening their preexisting beliefs and impeding their ability to come across varied or conflicting information.” (Putri, Purnomo, Khairunissa 2).

TikTok homogenizes disparate cultural perspectives in various ways; however, language and the means by which many of its Gen Z users are able to express themselves seem to be a prevailing issue. Nevertheless, in spite of TikTok’s rise in popularity amongst Gen Z individuals, I believe many of these people, in fact, covet a true space for public discourse that is not swayed by what is trending or what their algorithm has learned to feed them but are not left with many options in this current era where social media permeates throughout their lives.

Improper Word Usage

One way in which TikTok homogenizes contemporary language lies within the familiarization of misused terminology. Certain words and phrases will rise in popularity and start trending on the app very suddenly, causing users to associate that word or phrase with the content of the video it’s being used in, and to even begin applying that word or phrase to their daily vocabulary more regularly.

The issue with this is that oftentimes, as the word or phrase becomes repeated and reused over and over again, it begins to lose the specificity of its true meaning and morph into an ambiguous idea of something.

An example of this can be evidenced through the use of the term “point of view”. Point of view is a narrative mode commonly used in literature, cinematography, and even psychology in reference to the self and one’s own perspective.

While the concept of “point of view” in itself is nothing new, it has endured a rebirth of sorts via social media apps, most notably on TikTok. Videos overlaid with text that reads “pov:”, followed by a specific situation or event, have exploded as a long-lasting trend on the app. As the trend has developed and grown, “pov”’s true meaning has shifted from a distinct descriptor to a vague idea that can be as simple as signifying merely ‘something that has happened to someone’.