Do you ever wonder why people use the app you’re always dancing on so much?

TikTok, originally named musical.ly, was founded by ByteDance, a Beijing company founded in 2012. Over the past few months, TikTok has been trending as the video-sharing social media app has seen its creative and catchy videos take off.  The app has been out since 2016 (when it was called musical.ly) but it wasn’t really popular at that time, so the name change occurred because more features were added, According to Starrene Rhett Rocque, writer of Teen Vogue Magazine, TikTok is much cooler than other apps and it helps with teenagers as they’re getting older.  

 Now everyone is creating TikTok videos, it seems. And this really is everyone as the platform sees videos from teenagers, pets, celebrities, teachers, and even parents. Looking on snapchat, twitter, and instagram, and one of the primary things one sees are  TikTok videos, they’re everywhere. 

It’s no doubt that people love TikToks, especially teenagers. It’s a good way to keep them distracted and help them bond with people in their household. With the amount of people that use TikTok it’s almost like if you don’t use it, you’re missing out on a lot.

In fact, all of this popularity means that TikTok has risen in the app charts. On average one million TikTok videos are uploaded each day. Tiktok is available in 150 countries and receives 800 million downloads every day. Wow! 

However, there has been some recent discussion about possible issues related to the app. Verge editor Kim Lyons reports that TikTok could potentially be hacked by the Chinese-owned company. As she states, “It was possible to spoof text messages to make them appear to come from TikTok.” According to Lyons, it’s as if the hacker controls a person’s TikTok account. Then they are able to upload and delete videos, change accounts from private to public, and change settings on current videos. The problem with this is personal information can be leaked and it wouldn’t be in the hands of the owner.

Who would’ve ever thought an app that people love so much could cause all this harm? Most did not, but it has caused people to question their TikTok profiles because I know I did to a point where I even deleted the app just to be safe. Although the creators claim that these problems have been fixed, it just seems too good to be true, especially with everything that’s been going on with China. Well, if TikTok is still downloaded on your phones, my advice to you is to be as careful as you can. I know the app brings a lot of entertainment, so just pay close attention to the signs.